by Bart King
I held up my hand. “Shh!” I said. Anemona’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t used to being hushed.
Hoo-wett! Hoo-wett!
That squeaky whistling—was it my elusive wood duck? The wind had changed direction again, clearing the smoke enough for me to scan around us. I checked the tree where I’d installed a nesting box. Nope, it was deserted. Then I spotted something—a bird perched on the far side of a dead fir.
If I could just get a good look, I might finally be able to check it off my list….
□ Wood duck (Aix sponsa)
I know it seems crazy. But even with everything that was at stake, right then nothing was more important to me than seeing the duck that started my adventures.
I crept across the little canyon with my eyes trained on the bird. I lifted my binocs—but as I did, it hopped to another branch, around the tree trunk.
I eased backward and my hip bumped into something metal—it was Nyla’s bike, the one with streamers on the handlebars. It was toppling over, and so was I!
Nyla’s bike hit Sanjay’s orange bike, and it fell. Two more crashes followed, as the entire row of bikes collapsed like dominoes…with me on top!
Wings flapped above me as the bird flew off. I wasn’t going anywhere fast, though. I had fallen through Nyla’s bike frame with one arm twisted into the chain. That left my other arm and legs sticking up, with my rear end on the ground.
Anemona looked down at me.
“Oops,” I said, making a derp face. “Clumsy me.”
“Clumsy you,” agreed Anemona. “Listen, Noah, I want to talk to you about something. I think we should team up. Between the two of us, we can do amazing things.”
This caught me by surprise. “Seriously?”
“Seriously! We can help each other.” Anemona held out her hand to me. “Why do you think I set fire to those construction supplies? It was to finish the job that you started—preventing houses from being built here.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “But that building project’s been cancelled!”
“Really?” She looked up at her smoke plume and laughed. “Oh well—I tried! So just agree to be my partner anyway. Then we can go check on how the kids are doing with that fire. After that—well, think about it, Noah. It’ll be SO great. Together, you and I will be able to do whatever we want!”
Anemona said all this in a casual, friendly way. But she was watching me the way a cat watches a sparrow. What should I do? In less than an hour, I’d discovered that two other quincunxes existed. One was with Anemona, who saw it as a free ticket for doing anything, at any cost. The other quincunx was with a group of paranoid fourth graders preparing for interplanetary warfare.
Who was scarier—the girl who didn’t care about the bigger picture, or the kids who did care, but were looking at the wrong picture?
I looked at Anemona’s outstretched hand and considered her offer. I mean, I did have a lot of things to ask her. After all, based on what Anemona knew, she must have been speaking with an alien, too. But who? What did they talk about? And where had she found her quincunx anyway?
And squirrel power?
There was just one problem: Anemona was totally untrustworthy. “I’ll pass,” I said without moving. (Of course, I couldn’t move, but still.)
“No? That’s too bad.” Disappointed, Anemona unzipped her bag and pulled out her quincunx. As she tapped at it, I saw it was just like mine, except with a deep metallic ruby glow.
Anemona walked back over to the cliff by the waterfall. “There’s a bird nest behind here, isn’t there, Noah?” she called innocently before squirreling up the sheer wet rocks.
She wouldn’t dare.
Anemona stopped at the exact spot where the black swifts’ nest was concealed. “You’re the expert, Noah.” She reached a hand behind the waterfall and looked back at me. “Do all birds know how to swim?”
She dared!
The baby black swift must have seen Anemona’s fingers approaching its home.
Plik-plik-plik?
She has to be stopped! I reached into my shorts pocket and fumbled for my quincunx. A coyote ran past me followed by a jackrabbit. They were fleeing the fire. Overhead, birds were taking to the air, calling out their alarms.
There’s already a forest fire, I thought. Using the quincunx now, especially with an unknown new Adeptness, is a really bad idea. Plus, we’re being observed! That meant that even though Anemona had me trapped, I still had to act ethically. It was a total rip-off, but right now, that meant no quincunx. I had to deal with this crisis myself.
“Noah, I don’t have all day,” yelled Anemona, while water poured over her arm. “What’s it going to be?”
I pushed the quincunx deeper into my pocket. “Okay, okay!” I yelled. “You win!”
A moment later, Anemona dropped down off the cliff, as light as a feather. An evil, evil feather.
She walked over, wet hair dripping down her face, and held out her hand. “Take it.” Anemona had double-crossed me, mocked me, destroyed 15 percent of our school, and started a fire. But I didn’t see any other way out.
The girl reaching for me just threatened to drown a baby bird, I told myself as Anemona’s cold, wet fingers took mine. And now she’s my teammate.
Perhaps sensing danger, one of the black swifts had returned. It landed on the waterfall’s face. Cocking its head, it looked warily at me with one big, dark eye.
Anemona smiled and she pulled me up and out of the bike trap. “Come on, partner,” she said, her green eyes glittering. “Let’s go check how the children are doing.”
IT WASN’T HARD TO FIND THE LEADERSHIP KIDS. We just followed the sounds of coughing.
Smoldering tree trunks appeared, and the heat intensified as we walked down the trail. Smoke poured from burnt wood, but the flames had been doused and the spot where all the building supplies had been stacked was just empty ashes. In the middle of the burnt ash were four fourth graders.
“Hey, guys!” said Anemona brightly, waving.
Ricky gave Anemona a baleful stare. Nyla cleared her throat. Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl rubbed at a streak of black ash on her rainbow. Sanjay coughed, hunched over with his hands on his knees. I patted his back. “You okay?”
He wiped his eyes and croaked, “Yeah.”
“Man, how’d you guys put the fire out so fast?”
Nyla held up the Thingy. “It was easy. We just chose EXTINGUISH.”
You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.
Without glancing up, Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl said, “There was like a big ‘woosh,’ and a weird-smelling wind blew through”—she gestured at the smoking trunks—“and then this.”
Ricky must have spotted my incredulous expression. “Looks like Noah’s jealous that our Thingy is better than his.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” said Anemona innocently. “Hey, I wonder which one of us has the best one of these…‘quincunxes’? Maybe we could have a friendly competition to find out. You know, like a tournament.”
The leadership kids were instantly suspicious. “It wouldn’t be fair,” said Sanjay, managing to get his breath back and straighten up. “It’d be all of us against you.”
“Um…” I said.
Anemona smiled sweetly. “If anything, it would be Noah and me against YOU. See, we’re partners now.”
Uh-oh. “Listen, we shouldn’t be picking sides—”
“I KNEW IT!” yelled Ricky. He pointed an accusing finger at me. “What have I been telling you guys this whole time?”
The leadership kids drew together, watching Anemona and me warily. Nyla already had their Thingy out and was thumbing through screen selections.
Anemona pulled out her ruby quincunx. “This should be fun,” she insisted. “So don’t get all carried away with like, winning.” She gave me a look. “And, Noah, remember your promise. You’re either with me, or you can sit this one out. But no helping them.”
Argh! I needed to break my agreement with Anemona—but I couldn�
��t. Teaming up with the leadership kids was the right thing to do, but it would be totally unethical. How could something be good and bad at the same time?
As I wrestled with the idea of what to do, something hit me in the back. I turned around as a small rock hit me in the chest. Someone was throwing stuff at me from just beyond the fire circle.
“No-ah,” came a whisper from the trees. “Over here!”
I took a few steps toward the trees and whispered back to the phantom rock thrower: “I’m kind of busy right now.” But that just caused another rock to sail at me. “Hey, stop it! Who’s out there, anyway?”
The voice carried to me from the shadows. “It is me, No-ah. Zorcha. Zorcha T’wirpo!”
* * *
I once read about a dinosaur expert who found a fragment of fossilized bone. That was all she had to go on to reconstruct the animal it came from. Yet after a lot of research, this woman built an entire dinosaur skeleton around that one fragment.
I wasn’t trying to build a dinosaur, but I’d been trying to build a picture of what T’wirpo looked like ever since we first “met.” There was no fossil, but I did have the quincunx. And also, there was that quick glimpse of what T’wirpo’s planet looked like—the quincunx bush and its colorful “fruit” growing beneath four moons.
So till now I’d pictured the alien as either:
—A big, friendly bug…
—Or a blue-skinned human-ish being with big, elaborate hair and spotted skin…
—Or a plant-eating lizard creature who wore colorful robes.
Guess what?
I wasn’t even close.
I stepped out of the fire circle, peered into the shadows of the trees, and saw Zorcha T’wirpo. Finally! The alien was apparently…a big ball.
“T’wirpo? Is that you?”
The ball rolled forward and leaned toward me, like it was bowing. “Indeed. I am pleased to meet you, No-ah.”
ZORCHA T’WIRPO (Nonterrestria sphaerica)
APPEARANCE: A greenish-purple sphere about four feet across. No arms, legs, tentacles, or heads are visible. Closer inspection reveals the ball’s surface is semi-transparent. Beneath that surface, shapes and patterns move slowly, like Jupiter’s gas clouds.
VOICE: Speaks each word with the same volume and emphasis.
PLUMAGE: None.
RANGE/SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: Moves by rolling around like a big bubble of mercury. Exact range unknown, but undoubtedly far-reaching. Behavior suggests sociability with other species.
STATUS: Unknown.
So this is it. I gulped. The first meeting ever between humans and aliens. And who’s the human ambassador making a connection from our little planet to the stars? Who has this awesome responsibility?
ME.
Whatever words I said next would go down in history. They’d be included along with other legendary lines, like “I have a dream” and “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Who knows? Maybe schoolkids centuries from now would learn about what was said here today.
Here’s what I went with:
“Dude—you’re a ball?”
“A ball?” T’wirpo rolled backward a little. “No-ah, I am not a ball any more than you are a doll.”
Even in sci-fi films, I’d never even seen anything quite like T’wirpo. All those people who imagined extraterrestrials as human beings with bad hair and weird skulls should be embarrassed, I thought. Like me!
T’wirpo seemed to find me just as strange. “I am fascinated by that wet cave residing in your face,” the alien said. “The large one you call the ‘mouth.’ I trust this is not rude, but do you find it difficult to use that cave for both speaking as well as eating?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “It sounds weird when you say it that way, but I guess you get used to it. So where is your, um, eating cave?”
T’wirpo spun. The mottled layer under its red skin moved independently. I realized why T’wirpo didn’t want to meet “face-to-face.” T’wirpo didn’t seem to have one! (A face, that is.)
Meanwhile, T’wirpo had finished turning. “There. But I am afraid you cannot see my eating cave because of the PEE.”
“What?”
T’wirpo spun again, although his front and back seemed identical. “No-ah, I am wearing a protective suit. The Planet Earth Enabler. My PEE protects me from Earth’s low gravity, high temperature, and your toxic gases, like oxygen.”
Aha! So as a space suit just sort of suggests what the human inside looks like, I wasn’t seeing the “real” Zorcha T’wirpo. What I was seeing was its…PEE.
Still, I had to ask. “T’wirpo, do you know what ‘pee’ means here on Earth?”
“Allow me to check my database…ah, it is ‘bodily waste water’? First POO and now PEE.” I jumped back as the alien barked. “I have done it again!”
“I hate to even ask, but where do you get rid of waste?”
The alien just looked at me. (I know, it didn’t have eyes, but still.)
“Waste?” I added. “Poop?”
“I do not know what you are trying to get at.”
I sighed. “Okay, let’s try this. You can obviously see, but where are your eyes?”
Imagine a big ball nodding. “My vision receptors are in my skin, all around me. For example, I see that two of your friends are approaching at this very moment.”
Jason and Ronnie burst out of the trees behind T’wirpo, and Jason launched right in: “What the heck, Noah? A fire? I thought everything was supposed to be okay now!” Then he noticed T’wirpo. “And why are you hanging out with an exercise ball?”
Always the soccer player, Jason tried to kick the “ball” out of the way. As he did, T’wirpo squished down—and then bounced high up in the air.
A moment later, T’wirpo gently landed, its bottom flattening and then returning to shape. “Please refrain from that, Ja-son,” T’wirpo said. “I understand your confusion, but I am not an apparatus for one of your sporting matches.”
“Guys,” I said, “meet T’wirpo, the quincunx grower from an unknown POO.”
Jason’s jaw went slack. His eyes rolled. And his limbs flopped, one by one, like a marionette whose strings were being cut.
“He’s f-f-fainting!” cried Ronnie.
I almost caught Jason before his head hit a log.
JASON’S EYES FLICKERED OPEN.
“What happened?”
“You f-f-fainted,” said Ronnie. “Then you hit your head on a l-log.”
T’wirpo rolled worriedly around the three of us. “Is Ja-son reaching peak health again? Or is this an emergency of grave import? Your facial ingredients are very confusing.”
Jason looked over. “Our facial ingred—you mean our expressions?” He rose unsteadily to his feet, and I could tell Jason was a little disappointed T’wirpo didn’t have any slime or tentacles.
“It is good to meet both of you in person.” T’wirpo did one of its little bows. “Especially, you, Ron-nie. You are one of the few humans who does not pain my sight receptors.”
“It’s because of his pants, isn’t it?” asked Jason, still rubbing his head.
“No, said T’wirpo. “It is because Ron-nie’s shape is pleasingly spherical.”
I was getting nervous. “Look, I could stand here and talk about Ronnie’s awesomeness all day, but shouldn’t we go check on those other two quincunxes?”
And as if in answer, a deep drumbeat sounded through the smoldering tree trunks:
DOOM…DOOM…DOOM.
We raced toward the DOOMs inside the burn zone. (Well, three of us raced, one rolled.) Anemona had answered her call and was holding her red quincunx to her ear. “All right, then,” she said. “Yes, I’ll see you soon.”
Amenoma glanced at T’wirpo, the rolling alien (!), then casually looked around the clearing as if there might be something more interesting out there. I followed her gaze—and watched a large red ball shoot from the woods, skipping fast over the ground toward us, like a flat rock on wat
er.
“An alien!” Nyla yelled. Then she spotted T’wirpo. “Round aliens!” The leadership kids’ heads turned back and forth between T’wirpo and this newcomer as if they were watching extraterrestrial tennis. All of the kids—even Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl—wore grim determined looks, like: our time has come.
As for Anemona, she was like a hostess on a game show. “Everyone, please meet…um, would you pronounce your name for us?”
The red ball bounced slightly. “Florcha Y’tofer!” The voice vibrated with excitement. Its red PEE seemed smaller than T’wirpo’s, and the mottled patterns beneath the ball’s surface moved more quickly.
I looked over at T’wirpo, whose green PEE had faded to a pale yellow. “Hey, do you know Y’tofer?”
T’wirpo rolled uneasily back and forth. “Indeed—but we are not exactly friendly companions. In fact, one could say that Y’tofer is my ‘Coby.’”
The leadership kids began pointing to the opposite side of the fire circle. What now? And as if a forest fire and two aliens weren’t distracting enough, yet another ball emerged from the woods.
Ricky actually looked disappointed. “Earth is being invaded by a bunch of beach balls?”
As the new alien entered the burn zone, it didn’t roll along like T’wirpo or bounce through the air like Y’tofer. Instead, it skittered sideways around burnt trunks, and almost daintily sidestepped fallen branches. (I know, the ball didn’t actually step, but it seemed to.)
It rolled to a stop a short distance from us, close to the leadership kids. This new sphere was sky blue, and looked a bit larger than T’wirpo. Then it made a sound like popcorn popping. Some pops were deep and slow, and others sounded like drumsticks rolling on a snare.
T’wirpo’s PEE regained a little of its green color. “Let us speak in a manner these Earthlings understand. What are you doing here, Morcha Ph’pyp?”
Despite its round shape, the alien named Ph’pyp somehow shrugged in a way that communicated annoyance and guilt. “Very well,” the blue sphere answered. “As I was saying, T’wirpo, your planet smells like Jadrockian garbage.”
