Her foster mother lay on the Spiderman quilt, her hospital gown covered in a pile of wires and clear tubes, all melting, dripping, burning. Amy pulled at the horrifying mess in an attempt to free Lucia, but even more wires dropped from the ceiling.
Lucia shook her head and grabbed Amy’s hand.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
The walls of the room collapsed and smothered Amy in a soft and warm darkness. It smelled like a strange combination of cheddar cheese and wet dog.
“Get closer,” she heard Betsy say.
A high-pitched voice spoke near Amy’s ear. “Like this?”
“No. Under the nose.”
“How about inside? She’s got such a huge nose, poor dear. I could probably shove all of it in.”
“Whatever works,” said Betsy. “You know everything about humans, not me.”
Hummingbird wings buzzed at Amy’s cheek. Something that smelled of stale cheese scraped across her upper lip and into her left nostril.
Amy batted the thing away from her face and sat up, her eyes wide.
“Who’s sticking things in my nose?”
The hummingbird thing flew into a dark corner and Betsy barked, his front paws spread wide.
“Not me! I’m on guard duty,” he said.
Amy pulled an orange Cheeto from her nose and tossed it at the Jack Russell terrier, who spun in a circle and barked again.
“You did, too. I can see the bag.”
“Where?”
Amy pointed at the open bag of Cheetos on the floor. “Right there!”
Betsy whined and hung his head. “I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
“Who was it, then?”
“Me!” squeaked the high-pitched voice.
A pile of neckties twitched on the floor and a hummingbird crawled out. It leapt into the air and buzzed toward Amy.
Only it wasn’t a hummingbird. Wings beat the air to a blur just like a hummingbird, but in front of the blur floated a pale woman six inches high. Her blonde hair was pulled back to a ponytail and she wore a tiny pink blouse, white miniskirt, and white sandals.
The tiny woman crossed her arms and twisted her red lips into a scowl.
“You almost killed me. Be careful with those giant hands!”
“Ooookay,” said Amy. “Talking cats and dogs, and now a fairy.”
The flying woman gaped at Amy. “What did you call me?” She buzzed down to the bag of Cheetos and grabbed one, brandishing the snack food in her arms like a bulbous orange spear.
“Calm down, Nick,” said Betsy. “She didn’t mean that.”
The tiny woman flew up and jabbed the Cheeto at Amy’s nose.
“Ow!”
“Words hurt, but so do snack foods,” said the fairy woman.
Amy blocked the cheesy spear with her palm. “I’m sorry. What should I call you, if ‘fairy’ isn’t the right word?”
“Call me Princess Nick, commander of the skies, deadliest woman alive, and most beautiful creature in the quadrant!”
“You’re very beautiful, Princess Nick,” said Amy. “I love that outfit, especially the cute little skirt.”
The flying woman dropped the Cheeto and beamed happily. “Thank you! I’m the cutest thing in twelve systems but the animals around here couldn’t give a compliment to save their lives.”
“Hey! I’m no animal,” said Betsy. “I don’t wear clothes. How am I supposed to know what’s good and bad in fashion?”
“Shut up! You’ll put the human off her dinner. Eat more, now. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Cheetos? That’s my dinner?”
Nick tossed her blonde ponytail. “Of course! Nobody in Junktown eats that human food. It’s icky and low in energy. Sunflower dropped by and said he had a human pet, so I grabbed a few bags and flew over. I can tell you’re starving, poor dear. Just look at your filthy and lifeless hair.”
“Ooo, nasty,” said Betsy. “Do you think that’s normal for a human pet?”
Amy ran her fingers through her hair self-consciously. “Human pet? That’s not right. It’s against the Bill of Rights or the Magna Carta or something.”
Nick pouted. “I don’t understand. Sunflower saved you from the inspectors, you’re sleeping in his bed, and you don’t belong to him?”
“He’s the one who got me into this mess!”
“She’s from Old Earth,” said Betsy.
Nick laughed and flew in a circle. “Of course she is! How else does a human get on the ship?”
Amy sighed. She pulled a handful of Cheetos from the bag and popped them into her mouth. She grimaced at the texture, but swallowed.
“These must be a year or two old,” she said.
“I know,” said Nick. “They’ll make your skin glow. Eat up! Human food is yummy-yummy, put it in your giant tummy-tummy.”
“Cheetos aren’t supposed to be chewy.”
Nick pouted and put her fists on her waist. “Why are humans so picky about their food? Do you know all the things I had to trade for this? That’s a bucket full of clothes right there!”
“Did I say it was awful? I mean fantastic. Do you have any water?”
Betsy nudged a plastic container at Amy’s feet. “Here you go. Water, I think.”
“Is it fresh? Has it been boiled or decontaminated or whatever?”
The terrier hung his furry brown and white head. “No. I’ll send it through the cleaner. Where did I put my manos?”
Betsy stuck his front paw into a wide silver bracelet. The band tightened around his leg and four metal fingers and a thumb popped out of the surface, making it appear as if the dog had grown a mechanical hand.
“What on earth is that?” asked Amy.
“It’s a manos, of course,” said Betsy. “And not from Earth.”
Amy watched the terrier pull the container of water out of the room with the hand on his paw.
Nick circled the room until the door shut completely. “Clean water is very important for humans,” she said. “I forget that sometimes.”
Amy leaned back on a cushion. “So what do you do in this wild and crazy dream world, Princess Nick? Are you the Lady everyone’s talking about?”
“Absolutely not! Don’t even make a joke about that.”
“Sorry.”
“Apology accepted. I’m a sprite. I work in Gems and Minerals, Floor Twelve.”
“So you steal diamonds and rubies, that kind of thing?”
“Not anymore. I used to be an operator like Betsy and Sunflower, but I got promoted to curator. It’s a nine-to-five schedule, and better for watching my human. What did Sunflower call it? Oh, right––a desk job.”
Amy grabbed a handful of Cheetos and tossed them in her mouth. “Must be a tiny desk.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No. So I take it you’re from the planet Zooberon like the rest of these talking cats and dogs, who steal things from Earth but aren’t from Earth and aren’t aliens?”
Nick shook her head. “Poor girl. You still think it’s a dream.”
“What else?” Amy sniffed the air, then grabbed the front of her blouse and smelled the fabric. “One question: do you have showers in space?”
“My human thought it wasn’t real, either,” said Nick. “For at least a month after I saved him he kept muttering in a cute little voice that it was a nightmare. Then came the anger, the questions, trying to get me to send him home no matter what. It was so cute! Now he lays around all day and never talks to me at all, not even for cheesy treats. Do you think he’s getting old?”
“Maybe you should take him home. I mean, where you found him.”
“Haven’t those two boys told you anything? There’s no way to go back.”
“Sunflower said this was the year 3317. It sounds like he’s been bouncing between here and Earth all the time, so why can’t you go back?”
Nick shook her head and rubbed her tiny hands together.
“I keep forgetting you’re from Old Earth, with out of date Old E
arth knowledge implants.”
“I don’t have any knowledge implants!”
“Even worse,” said Nick. “You probably believe in magic, unicorns, an afterlife, and silly things like time travel. Launching into the same timeline as your own can’t work because of the conservation of matter. Chronology is irrelevant to the universe––what matters is your ‘matter,’ one place at a time.”
“But how are you stealing things from the past?”
“It’s not the past. Get away from that idea. Instead, think small. The wave form of a photon or any molecule can have a number of different states, none of them predictable.”
Amy nodded. “Quantum suicide.”
“Are you sure you don’t have a knowledge implant? Anyway, to sum up the theory, any possible change in state creates a copy where the change did not happen.”
“Mirror universes?”
“Kind of. We don’t travel through time; we shift into alternate universes, then return to our original universe, or state. It’s how we can steal the Hope Diamond over and over, even though it was never stolen in our universe. It’s not always in the same place, unfortunately. Some of the time it’s radioactive and some of the time surrounded by … I don’t know what to call them. A nasty horde of shambling humans with open mouths.”
“Zombies?”
“No. Tourists! That’s the word. This one time Betsy and I––”
“But, it doesn’t mean you can’t return. The alternate universe exists somewhere.”
“I guess it does, but the amount of energy needed to return there is exponentially higher than a random demat. That means the Lady won’t allow it, and that means it’s impossible. The Lady runs an efficient business.”
“Really? It sounds like the biggest flea market in the galaxy.”
The tiny eyes of the sprite popped and she looked around frantically.
“Fleas? Where?”
“I didn’t mean real fleas. I meant a kind of market.”
Nick sighed. “That’s good. Be careful with the ‘F’ word. We haven’t had an outbreak for three years, but it’s still a touchy subject.”
“So what kind of place is this, anyway?”
Nick landed on a nearby cushion. “This is the largest powered asteroid slash spaceship in a quadrant filled with massive spaceships. We’re orbiting Kepler Prime, the home planet of the sauropods, the most ferocious traders in the entire galaxy. Even though the Lady has protected the secrets of her demat and remat technology, she still has to make a profit. A thousand employees in a powered asteroid slash spaceship don’t come cheap, especially when you add 401k and dental.”
Betsy backed into the room pulling the square container. “Water’s here!”
“And that’s why we can’t launch back to the same dimension,” said Nick. “The bottom line.”
Amy poured water into a cup and took a cautious sip. It tasted like copper.
“The home planet of the sauropods,” she said. “Did you just make that up?”
Betsy tilted his head. “Make up what?”
“If anything sounds like an evil alien, it’s ‘sauropod.’ ”
“There aren’t any such thing as aliens,” said Nick. “Didn’t you tell her, Betsy?”
“I never had time! There was the inspection, and when we came here she just lay down and closed her eyes for hours!”
Nick buzzed into the air and hovered beside the terrier. “Humans have to do that every day,” she said. “It’s like I’m the only person around here who pays attention!”
Amy brushed the Cheeto dust from her fingers onto her black jeans. She stood and stretched with a sigh, her hands pressing on the low ceiling.
“Well, my little animal friends, this has been fun and everything, but I really need a shower. My face and neck have felt icky and nasty since I woke up. It’s probably some alien goop trying to take over my brain.”
“That was me,” said Betsy, wagging his tail happily. “I gave you a bath with my tongue.”
“Gross! Why?!!”
“You looked so pitiful on the cushion,” said Betsy. “Laying there with your mouth open and not moving. A little bit of drool ran from the corner of your mouth. I licked it up, but more kept coming, so I thought what the heck, and cleaned the rest of your face.”
Amy covered her mouth and bent over. “I’m going to be sick!”
“Betsy’s the one who should be sick,” said Nick. “Human mouths are full of germs!”
“I don’t know about that,” said the terrier. “But she hasn’t brushed in a while.”
Amy coughed into her sleeve. “Stop talking! I’m going to need industrial-strength mouthwash.”
“What is … mouthwash?” asked Nick. “I might have it at my apartment. I’ve got lots of strange jars and bottles of Old Earth stuff.”
“A miniature poona would be cheaper,” said Betsy.
Nick shook her head. “I can’t stand the smell.”
“All right, let’s take a walk to your place,” said Amy. “Where’s my rucksack?”
“Here,” said Betsy, and pulled the bag from under a pile of neckties.
Nick clapped her tiny hands and beamed. “This is so exciting! You can meet my human.”
“I don’t have a mirror,” said Amy. “Does anyone have a mirror?”
Nick beamed. “You want to look shiny and healthy for the other human. It’s so cute!”
“Not even. I just don’t want to be a muddy hobo with a face full of garbage.”
“You look fine. Not up to the beauty standards of a sprite princess, but fine for a human.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Maybe they’ll have puppies,” said Betsy. “Wait! Humans don’t have puppies. They lay eggs.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Nick. “They have tiny things called rug rats.”
“Nobody’s laying eggs or puppies or anything,” said Amy. “If your human touches me, I’ll punch his or her atoms into the next dimension.”
Betsy gasped. “Wow! Humans are powerful.”
Amy checked the contents of her pack: metal pigtail, binoculars, miniature flashlight, and brown skirt. She swung the strap over her shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Sunflower trotted into the room, the end of his orange tail switching back and forth.
“Nobody’s going anywhere.”
“Why not?” asked Amy, Nick, and Betsy in unison.
Sunflower sat on a cushion and scratched his neck with his back leg.
“That inspection was just the beginning. Junktown and all of C Sector are full of patrols, all of them looking for an illegal human. Orders are coming straight from the Lady.”
Nick crossed her tiny arms. “Any human, or just her?”
“The order just says ‘human,’ but it’s probably her.”
“But they could be looking for my human! It’s always getting out and wandering around Junktown. I have to go back!”
“Calm down, Nick.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You’ve only had your human pet for a day, so what do you care? I’ve had mine for years!”
Amy brushed a lock of her blonde hair back over one ear and adjusted the brown beret on her head.
“I thought I’d never say this, but the flying fai––I mean, Nick––is right,” she said. “We need to check on the other human, and I want a shower. Both very important and extremely critical things are at Nick’s place.”
“You know what the Lady will do if she catches us,” murmured Sunflower. “She’ll make us disappear.”
Amy shrugged. “I wish I could wake up and this whole dream would disappear. Do you have a better plan?”
Sunflower shook his head. “Not right now. I guess we’ll go to Nick’s place, even though we’ll probably be caught on the way and tortured and banished to another dimension.”
“Yay!” shouted Betsy and Nick together.
“You know you’re pulling the cart again, right?” said Sunflower.
&n
bsp; Betsy dropped his head. “Awww ….”
Chapter Six
Amy hugged her knees and folded into a tight ball at the bottom of Betsy’s cart. A blanket flew over her and blocked out the light, and the little dog-powered vehicle squeaked out of the alley.
“Try not to move,” whispered Nick’s high-pitched voice. “I’m sitting on your head.”
Amy thought over her situation as the wheels of the car whirred and jolted through the streets of Junktown, past rubbery smells, murmuring voices, and crowds of padding feet. If this was a dream, she should have woken up already. Was she having a delusional episode? Is this what happened to people when they were in a coma? Maybe she’d been hit by a truck. Maybe M.K. had sat on her. The possibilities were endless and the probabilities few. Would it be crazy to accept everything as real, or crazier not to?
After several sprints, gallops, and not a few panicked swerves the cart bumped to a stop.
“Quick,” whispered Sunflower. “We’re here.”
Amy threw off the blanket and climbed out. The black, murky shapes of tall buildings rose above her in the darkness, and were framed against the mist of the dome’s high ceiling. Below her feet, large patches of bright lavender glue covered the asphalt.
“Keep going,” said the terrier, Betsy. “I’ve got to take off my harness.”
Amy ran deeper into the shadowy lane after the dim shapes of Sunflower and Nick. The buzzing sprite hovered near a battered green door, looked left and right, and then dove into a tiny hole in the graffiti-covered brick wall. Metal clicked and clacked on the other side, and the door shivered.
“Push!” came Nick’s strained voice.
Amy put her shoulder to the metal door and forced it open just enough for her to turn sideways and squirm inside. Sunflower trotted after her without a problem.
“Mommy’s home, Philly-Billy!” screeched Nick. “Come and meet the guests!”
The sprite buzzed away, and Amy stared at Sunflower.
“Philly-Billy?”
Sunflower blinked his green eyes. “What’s the problem?”
“Never mind.”
A broken chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling and glowed with a dim light, although half the crystals were broken or missing. The room was packed with enough jars, bottles, and boxes to make a hoarder squirm. The walls were painted a bright shade of purple and a fluffy pink rug covered the floor, but neither were easily noticed under the piles of unopened snack food boxes, shampoo bottles, jugs of purified water, and all manner of hair brushes and human clothing.
The Girl Who Stole A Planet (Amy Armstrong Book 1) Page 7
