by Bart King
“Wow, that’s some b-body language,” said Ronnie, impressed.
“Yes,” said T’wirpo in an aside. “Shrugging is a primary part of my best friend’s communication.”
“That’s your best friend?” Jason did a fist pump. “We’re saved! It’s two against one!”
“I have come out of respect to our friendship, T’wirpo,” continued Morcha Ph’pyp. “That, and because my parental units made me.” The sphere gave another shrug, and this one somehow said, Now I have to do something I don’t want to. “First, my confession—I harvested one of your quincunxes. At the time, I did not know Y’tofer had plucked one as well.
“I deposited this quincunx in a human museum in the belief that a reasonably civilized earthling would find it.” Ph’pyp spun slowly toward the fourth-grade leadership kids. “This was apparently an error. Even so, I am responsible for my actions—and by extension, for these earthling primates.”
Then the ball rolled sideways a little closer to the leadership kids, who recoiled in horror. (Well, all of them except for Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl, who was dabbing at the ash on her shirt again.)
“But why?” T’wirpo shuddered from some emotion. Was it anger? Surprise? Confusion? “Why would you do such a thing, Ph’pyp?”
“It was a small-minded and mischievous act.” The blue sphere’s color deepened defiantly. “But, T’wirpo, your ‘save the humans’ interest has come to exclude all other activities. Can you even recall the last time we played with the Albian Proto-Matter Creator? We never even clamber together on a simple Möbius Fun Climb—”
I jumped as if stung by a bee. “My parents invented that!”
Ph’pyp turned toward me. I got the feeling it was giving me a look like I was an unpleasant bacteria in a microscope. “One of your species’ rare contributions to culture. You humans—you live in a vast, unknowable galaxy of infinite beauty. So what do you name it?”
Sanjay raised his hand and started jumping up and down. “Ooh, I know! The Milky Way!”
“Yes, the Milky Way,” confirmed Ph’pyp sarcastically. “You compare the most amazing thing imaginable to a dairy product. Why not simply call our galaxy the Small Curd Stars, or Frozen Yogurt Vista? Perhaps then the Interstellar Community will welcome you with open limbs.”
Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl took a halting step towards Ph’pyp, which I thought was pretty brave.
“Listen, I’m a peer counselor,” she said. “What I hear you saying, Ph’pyp, is that your feelings got hurt when your best friend ignored you. So you did something hurtful that you’d like to apologize for.”
Ph’pyp froze. The alien may have traveled across the vast void of the galaxy, but nothing had prepared it for Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl.
But right then, I just felt bad for Zorcha T’wirpo. Here this little extraterrestrial had tried to do the right thing by us humans, only to be betrayed by its best friend. And on top of that, T’wirpo’s worst enemy, Y’tofer, was deliberately messing up its science project. Its really important science project!
“Hey, T’wirpo,” I said softly. “Are you okay?”
T’wirpo’s sphere slumped. “This has been both a great shock and a mammoth disappointment.”
“But all three quincunxes are here, right now. Just take them back!”
“The quincunxes bond with their harvesters. So while I can communicate with yours, No-ah, only my classmates here can influence the other two—”
“Behold,” interrupted Ph’pyp, sounding unimpressed. “Another human.”
Red-faced and straining, Jenny appeared. She was forcing her wheelchair over the uneven, ashy ground with brute strength.
“I should have known she wouldn’t miss this,” muttered Jason.
He and Ronnie ran to her, and the two helped push Jenny from behind. As they did, Jason talked fast to bring his sister up to speed on the situation.
Meanwhile, Y’tofer started bouncing up and down, scattering ashes into the air.
“Okay everyone,” Anemona announced. “Y’tofer is totally bored, and so am I.” She looked meaningfully at the leadership kids. “So we say it’s time to get this tournament started. Like, right NOW!”
Sanjay’s eyes widened. “Hang on—what are the rules?”
Anemona glanced at her ruby quincunx. “There’s only one rule—you use your little Thingymabob and I’ll use mine. And we’ll see whose is better.”
“I’d like to know a few m-more details first,” Ronnie said. “For example, is this tournament dangerous? Are w-we all going to get killed?”
Jason was totally in his element. “We’ll be fine!” he coached. “We just need to have the right attitude for it. Tell me, people—are we ready to kick butt and take names?”
“I think w-we already know everyone’s names,” Ronnie pointed out. “Or is the idea to k-k-kick people’s butts and keep track of their names as we go? That way, we have a l-l-list of whose butt was kicked and whose wasn’t.”
Jason rubbed his forehead. “Yes, Ronnie. We’re all going to get killed.”
As we wasted precious time, Nyla waved for the leadership kids and Ph’pyp to huddle around her. A quiet argument began—Ricky and Rainbow-T-Shirt Girl wanted to choose a menu item from the Thingy right away, while Ph’pyp, Sanjay, and Nyla said to wait and see what Anemona and I did first.
“Hey, you guys!” I called over and held up my quincunx. “Remember, I’m not against you!”
They all ignored me, except Ricky. He gave me a hand gesture. (It wasn’t a very nice one.)
As for Anemona and Y’tofer, they must’ve already chosen, because the redhead and the red ball were just staring up at the sky.
Ominous dark clouds appeared.
“Hey, do you feel that?” asked Jenny. I did feel it—the air crackled with energy. You know that weird sensation of rubbing a balloon on wool? Multiply that by fifty.
“Nyla, hurry!” Sanjay urged, looking up at the clouds. “Just pick something!”
“Hey, Anemona, my money is on those kids and Mr. Grumpy over there!” Jenny called out, as the static made her dyed green hair rise. “What’s so great about what you chose?”
Anemona’s eyes danced. “Oh nothing, if you don’t count the LIGHTNING!”
“What?” I exclaimed. Is she out of her mind? “I thought this was just for fun!”
Pointing a hand up at the gathering storm clouds, Anemona gave a delighted laugh. “IT IS!”
“DID YOU HEAR THAT, T’WIRPO?” I demanded. “She gets LIGHTNING, but I have—” I scrolled, but my quincunx’s menu was completely empty. “Nothing.”
T’wirpo sat silently as the clouds swirled together, grew darker, and sank lower. Anemona raised her other hand, as if she were holding a sledgehammer. A flash of light sparked above, arcing across the sky.
Anemona looked at Ph’pyp and the leadership kids, then swung her imaginary sledgehammer down! Lightning streaked toward the doomed group, just as they all disappeared beneath—
A giant bowl.
Okay, it wasn’t an actual bowl. It was some kind of protective dome, but it looked like a big ceramic bowl turned upside down. The leadership kids’ Thingy must have offered it as a defensive choice.
The bowl’s curved surface glowed as the fork of lightning struck, but it held firm. A micro-instant later, a bigger lightning bolt hit in the exact same spot. This strike made the bowl shimmer so brightly, I had to close my eyes—and then the thunderclap hit!
I squeezed my hands over my ears but could still feel the force of that crash of thunder shaking my whole body. While my eyes were shut and my ears were covered, something gently bumped into my hip.
It was T’wirpo! “No-ah,” the alien said. T’wirpo’s color had now completely returned to its original greenish-purple. “Please check your quincunx.”
I did—and fast. Two items, HOMING and SEQUESTRATE, appeared on the list.
Now what? I’d gone from no choices to having one too many. “You guys, I have two things to pick from—HOMING and S
EQUESTRATE. Which one should I take?”
“Take the second one,” said Jason. “I mean, the other one sounds like it’s for homing pigeons.”
“Maybe HOMING homes in on a person’s weakness, and then uses it against them,” suggested Jenny.
This wasn’t helping. Anemona was winding her arms up again in a pretty good Thor imitation. “Hey, kids!” she yelled at the leadership kids’ dome. “I’m starting to get the hang of this!”
T’wirpo tilted back to observe the storm clouds. “It appears the red-haired human is packaging a number of lightning strikes into a single, more powerful one.”
The bowl shielding Ph’pyp and the leadership kids was already scorched all over, and I could see a fine, jagged crack across the top. It didn’t look like it could survive another lightning strike.
Ronnie must have seen it too. Before Anemona could unleash the fury of the heavens, he howled, “STOP!” Except it was all drawn out, like “STOOOOOP!”
Amazingly, everyone did. Stop, I mean. Even the storm clouds seemed to hold still for a moment. Ronnie—quiet little Ronnie—had just yelled!
“Anemona, Y’tofer—you can’t do this,” Ronnie said. “We humans have inalienable rights!”
Did you notice the amazing thing about that? Ronnie didn’t even stutter.
“‘Inalienable rights’?” asked Anemona. “What does that even mean?”
Ronnie coughed. “W-w-well, I actually just heard it in a m-movie somewhere.”
Anemona gave him a disgusted shake of her head and went right back to her thunder goddess routine.
So now it was up to me. HOMING and SEQUESTRATE were right there on my quincunx, but which one could stop a thunderbolt?
“Hey, Noah—why not pick both of them?” asked Jenny.
Yeah, I thought. Why not?
Taking Jenny’s suggestion, I used two fingers to select both commands at the same time. After tapping my quincunx’s side, its screen flashed back and forth between two commands:
HOMING
SEQUESTRATE
HOMING
SEQUESTRATE
Suddenly I felt like nothing could touch me. Literally!
Do you remember the sucking feeling I got when I used EXPROPRIATE? The new sensation sweeping through me was the exact opposite of that. It was like I was a refrigerator magnet that had been turned around and was invisibly pushing other magnets away.
When I’d used the quincunx before, it’d affected particular parts of my body, like my hands and mouth. But I wasn’t sure how to channel this new “repelling” sensation—it seemed to be radiating out from my whole body.
Lightning arced between the clouds above us. It looked like the next thunderbolt Anemona called down was going to be totally fearsome. There was no way the leadership kids’ dome could handle it.
“Okay, Noah,” said Jason. “It’s time to kick butt!”
“And don’t f-f-forget the names,” Ronnie.
Like a baseball pitcher, Anemona finished her windup and prepared to call down her thunderbolt….
So I looked right at her—and I released all that HOMING/SEQUESTRATE from inside of me! Gauzy energy surged out from my whole body, flowing in all directions. As the first wave hit Anemona, her eyes locked with mine for one terrible second.
“Backstabber!” she howled, and then Anemona was gone.
If we watched a super slow-mo replay, you could see that Anemona didn’t just *poof* disappear. Instead, it was like she suddenly flew backward to a distant spot, like at the far end of a telescope.
Then she was gone.
At the same time, there was also a shrinking red blur from behind Anemona, as Y’tofer went with her down the end of the telescope.
“Yeah!” I held back on the next wave of HOMING/SEQUESTRATE, and the gauzy energy surge dissolved into the air. “Did you guys see that?”
There was no answer. “Guys?”
I turned to find Ronnie, Jason, Jenny, and T’wirpo were all gone. Not only that, but the dome over Ph’pyp and the leadership kids had also vanished—along with everyone beneath it!
“Anyone?” There was no way they’d had time to run off. So that meant that HOMING/SEQUESTRATE had flowed out from me in ALL directions, sending each person and alien down the wrong end of the telescope, one after another.
“Hey!” Nyla’s head popped up from the ground. Then she stood and stepped out of the small furrow she’d been lying in. Nyla must have dropped down into it after their dome appeared, I thought. And being underground protected her from HOMING/SEQUESTRATE.
Nyla patted her pockets down, then started to search the ground nearby. “Noah,” she said, glancing over, “where’d everyone go?” I must have looked guilty, because Nyla added, “Did you do something to them?”
“Probably. I mean, I don’t really know,” I admitted, pressing my quincunx’s stem and feeling the energy inside me die down. “But whatever happened, it was an accident.”
“So you ‘accidentally’ did something, and now all my friends and all your friends are gone?” Nyla gave me a wary look. “Ricky was right about you.” With that, she ran off toward Noyd Falls.
“Nyla, wait!” I yelled, running after her.
She didn’t.
Alone in the silence, I looked up and watched the dark storm clouds separate from each other and scatter to the wind. Then…well, there’s no non-awkward way to say this—I felt something in my shorts. Like, added weight that wasn’t there before.
(No, not that.)
Reaching into my right pocket, my fingers met something smooth and oval. Pulling it out, I found a ruby-colored quincunx. Anemona’s! And in my left pocket, I found the leadership kids’ blue Thingy.
This is what Nyla was looking for, I realized. So now I’ve got all THREE quincunxes. But how?
My best guess was that SEQUESTRATE probably meant something like “confiscate.” But that only explained part of the puzzle. I’d also just sent a whole group down the telescope. (Luckily, they hadn’t ended up in my pockets.) Had HOMING sent them to my home? That could be a problem. Sure, my parents are easygoing. But having three aliens rolling around in our backyard might freak even Mom and Dad out—even if the aliens were fans of the Möbius Fun Climb.
Of course, HOMING could have just sent everyone to their own homes. Yeah, I thought, crossing my fingers. That’s probably what it did.
Otherwise, I might have just sent seven innocent kids to an alien space station—or even a distant planet. (Okay, five innocent kids, plus Ricky and Anemona.)
Just as I reached the waterfall, I glimpsed Nyla pushing her bicycle down the trail quickly, her handlebar streamers flying behind her.
But were the twins safely home again? The only way to find out was to get to the Brights’ home right away! I was worried, but the weight of the quincunxes in my pockets somehow reassured me a little. After all, I had all three of them. With the powers they contained, I could fix this problem. Really, I could fix any problem, right? True, it’s not like I needed to unleash an earthquake, smite something with lightning, or freeze a swimming pool right at that moment.
But just knowing I could do those things was a pretty awesome feeling.
The flap of deep wing beats suddenly filled the air. A colorful bird circled the pool, gleaming shades of green and purple shining from its feathers as it glided down onto the water.
That crested head, those colors…WOOD DUCK!
Ripples surged in the water from the force of the drake’s landing. A frog jumped into the water with a splash, which led to a series of splashes as other startled frogs launched into the pool. Each splash created a ripple of its own, and so another frog, and another, would launch itself into the water.
Ripples within ripples. Causes and effects. Dominoes in an infinite sea of darkness.
And that made me think that I needed to wise up! Having all three quincunxes only guaranteed one thing—the twins were in trouble.
I began digging a hole near the pool with a stick an
d my hands. As I did, the wood duck paddled contentedly around, bobbing its head back and forth. I dug deeper and deeper. At last, I set the three quincunxes—one blue, one ruby red, and one purple-green—into it.
“You’ll be safe here,” I said. I covered the hole, then I moved a flat rock over the spot.
As I stood, the drake tipped forward, plunging his head underwater, and pushing its upended rump straight up.
Despite everything, I smiled.
✓ Wood duck (Aix sponsa)
Then, just to hear the name out loud, I said it. “Wood duck.”
The drake popped up from the water and gazed over with its majestic red eyes.
The bird’s watching the bird-watcher and the bird-watcher’s watching the bird, I thought, glancing at the sky. And T’wirpo—are you up there again, watching us?
With a sudden flap of its wings, the drake flew onto a nearby tree, landed on a branch, and perched next to another bird. She was brown with white spots and a crested head. A female wood duck.
Then I saw the nesting box—the one I’d installed last year—was in that tree. It looked like I’d attracted a pair of wood ducks, after all. Maybe next spring, the nesting box would be full of ducklings.
My spirits lifted. Yes, there were ultra-serious questions facing me, my friends, and the whole planet. But you know what? It looked like my Drake Equation had possibility. That meant maybe there was still hope for Zorcha T’wirpo’s project, too.
I needed to get moving, so I started down the trail. I had to find Ronnie and the twins and everyone else. (Yes, even Ricky!) Behind me, the water bubbled and the ducks nestled in together. The three quincunxes rested quietly together. And in a hidden nest behind the waterfall, a healthy little black swift called out:
Plik-plik-plik-plik.
Field Notes
1. FIELD NOTES: About Me (Yay, Me)
My family moved to Santa Rosa three years ago. It’s a city in northern California that’s twenty miles from the ocean. Before that I lived my whole life in Albuquerque, New Mexico—up in the mountains, and nowhere near the sea.
