by Steve Cole
Hang on – the holdall was moving like there was something INSIDE it?
What?
WHAT?
WHAAAAAAAAAAT—?
Suddenly, with a loud, rude, unzipping sound, a horrible, wrinkly head burst out from the battered leather bag like a slimy green rugby ball.
THERE WAS AN ALIEN IN MY HOLDALL!
I sat frozen on the bed. Staring.
Three dark eyes stared back and winked at me in sequence.
There was a living creature in my holdall. It was like nothing on Earth.
You might remember this bit from the start of the book. I threw it in there to kind of get your attention and draw you into the story. Pretty cool stylistic device, huh?
I also threw it in because your first meeting with an ALIEN takes time to get over. And now you’ve had about 71 pages. See? I’m good to you.
Alien.
Alien? Alien! Alien; alien. Alien: A:L.I;E-N, a l i e n, alien. Alien— @lien . . .
Dad said aliens were real . . . that some had visited and stayed.
As Helen would say, O.M.GEEEEEEE!
Little green men – that’s often how the UFO-spotters describe creatures from space, isn’t it? That’s the image that stuck. Well, this little “man” was very green. And boy, was he ugly.
His three eyes were probably the most normal thing about him. His ears looked like noses – which wasn’t surprising because in fact, they were noses, one either side of his head. And where a nose should be there was something like an ear. And hanging between those noses, pitched beneath the ear like a wide, toothy hammock, was the creature’s mouth, stretched open in a weird grin . . .
“Hello!” said the little green man in a funny, gruff voice. “Hello!”
I opened my mouth but no sound could sneak out. I wanted to run, but my limbs had locked solid.
“Hello, clothes!” The alien lifted out some of my T-shirts and trousers from the holdall, gripping them with long, sticky fingers. “Clothes! Hello. Hello!”
“Wh . . .” I began; a promising start, I trust you’ll agree. “Wh . . . Wha . . . What . . . ?”
“RUBBISH!” The alien tossed the clothes away. “Lame! Hello?!”
I tried again: “What . . . are . . . you . . . ?”
“What am I WEARING?” Suddenly he jumped out of the bag and landed by the door, blocking my way out. “Hello? See! Hello!”
Now I could see he really was a little green man – about the same size as a penguin. His slimy lump of a body was badly concealed beneath an old tweed waistcoat. A gold medallion hung around his neck. His big four-fingered hands were on his hips. Stumpy, kneeless legs poked out from a pair of football shorts, ending in big flippery feet squashed into a pair of flip-flops. But why am I bothering to describe it when you can just look at a picture?
Before I could get any further with my attempts to speak, the alien spoke again: “I’m Little G!”
“You’re . . .”
“Little G!” He held up his medallion like a cop showing ID. “Hello! Little G! I’m not wearing none of your rubbish clothes!”
“You . . . were stealing my clothes!” I said dumbly.
“NO! Stuff them in the toilet!” Then Little G’s three eyes widened and he suddenly gave a weird, throaty cry, like he’d stepped on something. “You! You . . . are the one! The one who WILL!”
It was a good thing I’d lost the power to talk as I wasn’t sure what to say to that in any case. “Um . . . will what?”
“Spaceboy.” The alien threw open his long arms. “Give me a hug.”
“Huh?”
“Hug, spaceboy!”
I took a step back. “What?”
“Hello! Hug.” He clapped, as if I were a puppy and he was trying to get my attention. “You and Little G. Right now. Hug.”
“Why did you call me ‘spaceboy’?”
“GIVE ME A HUG!” Little G sped towards me, waddling like a penguin in his flip-flops. I backed away into the bathroom and climbed on top of the toilet. “Get away from me!”
But the weirdo alien wasn’t giving up. “Hug! Hug! Hello! Hug! You the one who will! I smell the tongue.” He waved his arms, reaching out to grab me. “The TONGUE! THE TONNNNNNNNNNGUE!!!”
“Leave me alone!” I yelled, and I jumped through the air, right over Little G’s head. I landed nimbly and ran for the door – which suddenly opened, clonking me in the face.
“OWW!” I fell back onto the bed. Next moment, I felt Little G’s long, sticky arms wrap around me.
“Mmmmm.” Little G snuggled his sticky green face against my cheek. “Hug, spaceboy. Fly high, fly high! Mmm, tongue! I can smell it!”
“Stop smelling my tongue,” I cried. “Somebody save meeeeeee!”
“Oh, man,” came a girl’s voice from the doorway. “Uh, Little G? I think the new kid would like you to let him go now.”
“He the one, Elodie! Spaceboy! Hello!”
“Don’t think so, G.” She sounded American to me, but with a funny accent. “Go on, now. Scoot.”
“Scoot?” Looking kind of hurt, Little G let go of me and waddled away, out of the room. “I smell the tongue! Bye-bye, spaceboy-one. Bye-bye, Elodie!” He walked away – then suddenly came back and attempted a clumsy high five with Elodie before leaving again. “Bye! See you soon! Byeeee!”
I was left shivering on the bed, looking at this Elodie girl – a girl around my own age with freckles and dark hair like mine only longer.
“So, I guess you’re gonna have some questions,” said Elodie, folding her arms.
“Yes,” I said weakly.
“Well, do you mind if we run through them real fast? I’ve been mentally calculating some seriously mental calculations and I don’t want to forget my place before I get to the Crèche. Do me a favour, eh? Remember seven-three-nine-seven-seven-point-three.”
I gulped. “Seven . . . three . . . ?”
“Now, things you need to know – am I American? No, I’m from Ontario. That’s in Canada. Call me American and I’ll break your face.”
“Um . . . OK.” I was still reeling from my close encounter with the little green man who’d just been chasing me. “Listen, who—?”
“Who is my mother?” Elodie smiled, approvingly. “My mother is the famous scientist Hannah-Anna Hongananner. You’ve heard of her, of course.”
“No.”
“WHAT? Where’ve you been, kid? You’ve never heard of the Hongananner Theory of Quantum Scatter?”
“No.”
“The Hongananner Atomic Code-Splitting Engine?”
“No.”
“The Hongananner Theory of the Emission of Titulus-Sprinkle Molecules in Ambient Space?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“NO!” I cried. “Now, never mind all that, what about—”
“What about you. Uh-huh.” Elodie nodded. “Time out from your questions – I got one of my own. What’s your name?”
“Tim,” I replied, not unreasonably. “And I’m with my dad, he’s a space genius. But—”
“Yeah? Who is he?”
“Look, never mind all that, right now!” I insisted. “You’re meant to be answering my questions. What did I just meet in here—?”
“Oh, Little G?” Elodie lowered one eyebrow and raised the other. “Crashed on Earth in the Mojave desert in Southern California, years back. Only survivor. Seems kind of dumb. US military got him; they’re keeping him around until the military perfect their brain-drain device to suck out any secret know-how he may have hidden away in there. These guys don’t play around. Too much at stake, protectors of the world, blah blah blah.”
I opened my mouth to butt in. “Er—”
“OK, next question,” Elodie went on forcefully. “You’re thinking, is Little G anything to do with the Giant Extra-Terrestrials who left those big footprints outside? Answer: no, he’s from a totally different galaxy. But studying his native lan
guage has helped my mum and her team translate a little of the GETs’ smell-code. My mum, your dad, all the others, they’re now part of a super-brainy think tank working on how to sort out the Alien Problem.”
“Um—?”
“I guess you’re wondering what’s next for you now, eh?” Elodie nodded sympathetically. “Well, you’re gonna join us in the Crèche, where us hostage kids can pass time while our genius scientist parents work their butts off. But with a little not-always-willing help from Sergeant Katzburger, we’ve made the Crèche into something a bit more hardcore.” She leaned against the side of the doorway. “Now, what was that number I told you to remember?”
I coughed awkwardly. “Three-something?”
Elodie blinked. Then she smiled sympathetically. “I get it. Too much information for your brain in one hit. Sorry, kid. I just assumed you’d be a brainiac like the rest of us.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
“Cle-ver peo-ple,” Elodie intoned slowly. “Don’t worry. Why not come with me to the Crèche and meet the other inmates? You may as well.” She paused and half smiled. “Unless you’d rather call back Little G for a smooch?”
I was at her side in a moment. Safety in numbers, right? That’s what I thought.
And of course, I was wrong.
I followed Elodie through the well-lit tunnels. She was muttering under her breath – big numbers by the sound of it. My head was spinning. First I’d seen evidence of alien life in massive footprint form. Then I’d seen it in the flesh. And it had smelled my tongue. Ugh! Its appearance here threw a freaky new spin on Dad’s tall tale of aliens dropping me on the doorstep.
“Little G called me ‘the one’,” I said. “What did he mean by that?”
Elodie stopped counting and shrugged. “He probably just means there’s one of you. His ship gave up some cool pointers for the secret experimental space travel programme they’re working on here, and they hoped Little G would show them how to work it. But he seems kind of useless with technology. Prefers clothes. Anyways, you want to know what the G stands for, right?”
“Er—”
“Well, who knows? It’s just what he calls himself. Don’t worry about G – he’s harmless. And kind of dim.” She paused. “But don’t worry, I’m sure that’s not why he seems to like you so much.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. “If any alien has to take an interest in me, I’d sooner it’s him and not one of those Giant Extra-Terrestrials. How big must they be to leave such massive great footprints in the snow?”
“Maybe a thousand metres tall?” said Elodie. “The latest theory is that the GETs can change their physical state from solid to weightless and back again. Otherwise there’d be prints all over the place. Same with their spaceships – that’s why no one’s seen any trace that they’ve landed.”
“If they’re that big, they could park on a mountain and hop down to Earth like we jump off a bus,” I said, trying to get my head round it. “But if big fat aliens—”
“No one said they were chubby.”
“—are walking about the place, how come no one’s seen them?”
“They can hide themselves. Maybe on purpose . . . Maybe because they’re so alien, our eyes kind of reject them.” Elodie shrugged. “Remember how no one could describe the Big Blanket? The GETs’ world and our world must be very different. To our senses, they seem invisible; our eyes reject them. Maybe they have trouble seeing us too.”
“That’s freaky,” I said.
Elodie maybe noticed how worried I looked. “Hey, chill, eh? Maybe the GETs are harmless, like Little G. Space tourists or something.”
I seized the thought hopefully. Alien space tourists, taking pics of the funny-looking human creatures just as we might photograph animals in a safari park. That was better than being invaded by killer monsters here to conquer Earth. “You really think so?”
“It’s a poss. Mum thinks the Yellow Downpour could be space-fuel spillage. And the Big Blanket in Luxembourg could be a piece of some weird alien equipment.” She pointed down a side tunnel. “They’re still running tests on it to find out.”
I frowned. “The Big Blanket is here?”
“Of course. And a fair bit of the yellow stuff. Both being analysed, big time.” Elodie stopped and frowned back at me. “Don’t you get it, Tim? This is the nerve centre of the whole alien investigation. Every bit of evidence we’ve found, every expert who could be any use is right here – or soon will be – working as hard and as fast as possible to decode this smell message and get our own space-travel system up and running. It’s called the hyper-beam.”
“I heard Dad mention that once,” I realised. “He knew about this weirdo stuff. He knew!”
“Well, anyways . . .” She stopped walking, pausing impressively beside a big red door. “Rather than just sit around, we’re doing our bit to help. Welcome to . . . the Crèche!”
She opened the door.
A vast, blank-faced yellow robot loomed over me, blocking the way.
I yelled, ducking under its arm and running blindly inside the room – for all of about two metres. Then I caught a blur of dark skin and blue T-shirt and WHUMP, I was on the floor beside another boy.
“I dropped it!” the boy (or, yes, OK then, boy-genius, as I was soon to find out) shouted. He had a classically geeky voice, with maybe a hint of Aussie thrown in. “The fission chip! I dropped it!”
“Fish and chips?” I echoed stupidly.
“Nooooooooo!” yelled Elodie, falling on all fours and scanning the floor. “Ray, can you see it?”
I couldn’t believe them. “There’s a ma-hoosive robot in here and you’re worried about—?”
“No one move!” Ray looked panic stricken as he waved his hands over the tiled floor. “No one move, no one move!”
So, anyway . . .
The yellow robot wasn’t listening to Ray’s pleas for no movement. It swung round to face us. Then it toppled forward, reached out for us with huge, gripping fingers . . .
“Look out!”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself in action hero mode.
I grabbed a long metal tube from the nearest desk and swung it like a bat at the robot’s head. CLANG! The blow made my arms jangle right back to my sockets but the robot was sent staggering! YES!
“Nooooooooo!” yelled Elodie again. “You just hit Kimmy with my quantum-flux polariser!”
My heroic pride quickly shrivelled. “Kimmy?”
Ray was glaring at me with big dark eyes. “That’s not a robot, whoever-you-are! It’s a nine-year-old girl wearing stilts inside a super-advanced mechanical suit.”
“Kimmy!” Elodie was back on her feet and reaching out to the robot which was now teetering on one leg. “Don’t put your foot down, you’ll squash the—”
CRUNCH!
That was the sound of a fission chip’s doom. Kimmy’s robot foot squashed it good and proper.
Then there was silence, save for the whirr of the computer banks lining the walls, and the hum of the fluorescent strips lighting the room, and the bubble of chemicals on the various lab benches that stood dotted about like strange grazing animals, and the zappety-zap of massive 3D printers as they made mysterious components for still-more-mysterious machines, and the low drone of the several TV screens hanging from the exposed rock ceiling. So, not really silence at all, then (but still, as descriptions go it was kind of evocative, wasn’t it?).
In short, this was like no crèche I’d ever heard of. And the kids in it weren’t kids. From the look and sound of things, they were all geniuses.
Ray clutched his head like he’d been kicked there. “Ohhhh, BOTTOMS! It took me ages to program that fission chip.”
I licked my dry lips. “I’m sorry.”
Elodie grabbed back the metal tube from my grip, fuming. “And are you sorry about the dent you put in my fifty-thousand-Canadian-dollar quantum flux polariser?”
I cringed. “I didn’t k
now! I thought it was just a big metal stick. I thought we were being attacked by a killer robot.”
“By ME?” The robot pulled off its head to reveal a short Japanese girl, with bunches. “This ain’t no flippin’ robot, Mr Dummyhead. It is TAMASSISS – a Transcending All Matter And Sustaining Survival In Space Suit! And it’s totally my design, so hands off. Try to copy it and I’ll sue your butt off. Your butt will owe me its entire, um, butt.”
“Kimmy is obsessed by legal action,” Ray explained.
“Careful what you tell him, Ray,” warned Kimmy. “He could be a spy.”
“I’m not a spy, and I’m not going to rip off your design!” I protested. “I don’t even know what that robot thing does!”
“Oh, sure. You oh-so-conveniently don’t happen to know what the TAMASSISS does.” Kimmy folded her arms and looked all sassy at me (TAMA-sassy, probably). “Like, you’re just a simple, ignorant kid, huh?”
“Uh, actually Kimmy, I think he is.” Elodie sighed. “Well, everyone. Say hi to Tim, eh?”
No one said anything.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwkwarrrrrrrrrrrrd.
Finally, Kimmy held up a hand and Ray grudgingly said, “Hey, man.” Then he started to stare at me with those big eyes. “He’s really not like us?”
Kimmy nodded, wonderingly. “He’s . . . normal!”
“Normal? Me?” Weirdly, I felt suddenly emotional. My whole life, I’d wanted nothing more than to be thought of as normal. And now, in here of all places, after being kidnapped and flown to the top of the world and chased by aliens, I’d finally achieved that blissful non-achievement I’d longed for all this time: normality.
“My dad’s the clever one, not me,” I mumbled. “What is this TAMASSISS transcending-matter thing? In words a dimwit like me can understand.”
Elodie helped Kimmy climb out of the suit, which was clearly meant for a full-sized adult, not a slightly annoying child. “This thing is protective armour we hope will keep astronauts together when they’re using the hyper-beam travel system.”
