by Maggie Allen
Then everybody got concerned and put me to bed and got the doctor. It turned out I had the flu, which must have come up to Alpha with one of the new government people or security guys or scientists, because it wasn’t here before. Jillian and Ben got it, too, and a whole lot of other people, including Dr. Porter. Mom brought me chicken soup and put cold cloths on my head. Dad read me stories. They both forgave me for yelling at them because, after all, I had been coming down with the flu and wasn’t really myself. Sickness has some good points.
Too bad you have to feel so rotten to take advantage of them.
After a few days, the fever and achiness and throwing up stopped. I still felt yukky, though. Nothing was any fun. Jillian and Ben were still sick. Most of the people who came up to Alpha while the aliens were here had gone back down to Earth. I messaged with Kezia and Alice on Earth, but I couldn’t call H’raf because once the alien ship left, we couldn’t contact them. Dad says their spaceship isn’t in normal space, but I think their cell plan just has really poor coverage.
Luna and I went every day to the storage closet so I could play with the bic!dul that H’raf gave me. The bic!dul wasn’t H’raf, or anybody else I could play with. But H’raf made it for me, and so it was a piece of him, like a memory is a piece of somebody. I didn’t want a piece of H’raf, I wanted the whole alien. But this is what I got.
Then the storage closet got filled up with new supplies from Earth, big crates of something or other, and there was no room for us. So Luna and the bic!dul H’raf and I went down to a new bore tunnel.
I was not supposed to be there. The bore machinery is big and loud and dangerous. It works all the time, all by itself, cutting through rock to make new tunnels and new rooms. Then robot arms load the rock onto little train cars and take it up to the surface to dump. Other robots, which are mostly arms attached to weird-looking machines, smooth out the tunnel floors and put in lights and air ducts and stuff like that. The robots install security cameras, too, but this tunnel didn’t have them yet.
Which is why I went there.
I sat on the rough rock floor of the new tunnel and played with the bic!dul. “Be H’raf,” I told it in Alienese. The blob melted and then reformed into the shape of a little green H’raf.
“Be a phone.”
It did, although of course the phone didn’t work. But, then, neither did the green H’raf.
“Be a ball.”
The bic!dul became a ball and Luna barked at it. “Fetch, Luna!” I threw the ball down the tunnel, away from the bore machine. It bounced off the wall. Before Luna could grab it, a robot arm installing air ducts picked it up.
I jumped up, scraping my knee on the rough rock. “Give that back! It’s not an air duct, you stupid robot!”
The robot squashed the bic!dul flat—robots are really strong—and cemented it into the ceiling, which was what it was programmed to do, and reached down for another air duct.
“Give it back! It’s mine!”
The robot cemented a second air duct over the ball. I hit the robot, which did no good at all. Luna barked and jumped. My phone rang. Shouting and barks and phone chimes echoed off the stone walls.
“Nia,” Dad said, on audio override, “where are you? Come back to the apartment. Your mother is sick.”
Mom had the flu. She was sicker than I had been, but not dangerously sick. The doctor said so. Here’s what I didn’t know before: It’s not so bad to have someone in your family sick if you’re not. I got to help take care of Mom, which had never ever happened before because Mom was always the strong one. Now she wasn’t. I made her soup—Dad showed me how—and I put cold cloths on her forehead and I read to her, because it hurt her eyes to read. It cheered me up a lot, especially since Dad was often gone. There was something going on at the Moon Council. He’s not a member, but Mom is and he was filling in for her. So I took care of Mom—I was important!
And she didn’t once tell me to clean my room or stand up straighter or not be so impulsive. It was great.
Until she got better.
After lunch one day, she put on her glasses, blinked, and said to Dad, “Wayne, fill me in on the crisis.”
I looked up from carrying away the tray with her lunch dishes. Did she mean the crisis on the alien colony world? Was it over, and maybe H’raf was coming back?
But it wasn’t the aliens’ crisis. It was a crisis on Alpha. Dad glanced at me and ran his hand through his hair. “I haven’t wanted to worry Nia.”
Mom said, “Nia is old enough to understand. She’s learned a lot of self-control, and she’s been so mature during my illness.”
I put the tray down, looking mature and self-controlled and old enough to understand anything.
Dad said to Mom, “Haven’t you kept up with the Council bulletins?”
“Reading still gives me a headache, Wayne—tell us.”
Us. I looked even more mature. I did this by nodding seriously and sort of squinting up my eyes, like I was gazing at A Really Important Crisis.
Dad still looked uncertain. But he said, “Nia—do you know what disassemblers are?”
“No.” Six words into the crisis, and already I didn’t understand.
“Well—everything in the world is made up of atoms, right? The bed, the dishes, you and me—everything.”
“I know that.” Sometimes they treat me like I’m six.
“Do you know what an atom is made up of?”
“It’s got, uh, stuff in the middle and electrons go whizzing around the center.”
“Close enough. Have you ever heard of nanotechnology?”
It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I said, “Sort of.”
Mom said, “Nanotech is building up things atom by atom, kind of like the 3-D printer does, but on a more basic level. A nanotech machine could build anything out of the right materials.”
“Really?” I pictured a big box that could make anything: ice cream cones, cell phones, robot dogs like Luna. “Do we have one?”
“No. Human technology is only as far as 3-D printers.”
Too bad. Our 3-D printer was only programmed to make boring things like cups and socks and parts for other machines. I said, “But how is nanotechnology a crisis right now on Alpha?”
Dad said, “Nanotech builds things using tiny little machines called ‘assemblers.’”
“Because they assemble atoms,” I said, feeling smart.
“Right. But—”
All at once I got it. I jumped up, spilling the rest of the soup and water from Mom’s tray. “You said ‘disassemblers,’ not ‘assemblers’! Do disassemblers take things apart?”
“Yes. Atom by atom,” Mom said. Dad was wiping up the spills on the floor.
“And we have disassemblers on Alpha? That’s the crisis?”
“Yes.”
“But…what are the disassemblers taking apart atom by atom?”
Long silence. Then Mom said, “The moon.”
It wasn’t quite as bad as that—at least, not yet. The disassemblers were in only one spot and were so far taking apart only a few rocks. But—get this!—they were spreading. The disassemblers had assemblers with them, and the assemblers were making more disassemblers so that they could take apart more things! What kind of stupid idea is that? It’s like my bratty cousin Jason could make more and more Jasons until the whole world was filled with whining, bratty little cousins.
Nobody knew where the disassemblers came from. So far, they were in only one place on the moon. All the scientists were working to keep them there, and more scientists were coming up on shuttles from Earth. Pretty soon we might have as many scientists as atoms.
Dad and I were having cocoa at our tiny kitchen table when I asked him about the worst-case scenario. That’s the most terrible thing that can ever happen. I thought the worst-case scenario would be that the whole moon is dissembled, but Dad said no.
“We wouldn’t let it get that far. If necessary, the Moon-NASA Council will authoriz
e blowing up part of Alpha Colony, using bombs big enough to destroy all the disassemblers.”
“Blow up how much of Alpha?”
“As much as necessary,” he said.
“Dad—how much?”
“A lot. But if that happens, we’ll already have been evacuated to Earth. We’ll be safe.”
“But Alpha Colony won’t! It will be blown up!”
“Nia, you really don’t have to worry about this. The Council will come up with a solution. Meanwhile, Dr. Porter wants to see you for another language session.”
I groaned. “I already told him all the Alienese I know! Jillian told him, and Ben told him, and he recorded everything, and anyway I don’t like him!”
“Why don’t you like him?”
That’s the sort of question Dad always asks. Mom would just have said, “I don’t care if you like him or not. You’re going.” I said, “He treats me like a baby. He even treats Jillian like a baby and she’s thirteen.”
Mom came into the kitchen, dressed for work. “Nia, don’t you have a language session with Dr. Porter?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Dad said.
“I don’t like him,” I said.
Mom said, “I don’t care if you like him or not. This is important. You’re going.”
“Nia!” said Dr. Porter in his worst fake-syrupy voice. “How good of you to come! And only fifteen minutes late!”
Julia Liu, who operates the recording equipment, grinned at me. I don’t think she likes Dr. Porter, either.
He said, “Are you ready, dear? Don’t be nervous, now.”
“I’m not nervous.” Why would I be nervous? We’ve done this a gazillion times before.
“Fine. I want to talk about the alien-language phrase that has been giving us so much trouble.” Dr. Porter raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted his thumb, and said, “pof,” very softly.
“I already told you that I don’t know what it means.” I told him and told him!
“Ah, but we have made some progress with the phrase. We’ve studied every single occasion that anyone used it, and ‘clanth’ with the thumb twist seems to indicate a problem or trouble that hasn’t arrived yet. There are English phrases that people say to ward off bad luck—you have probably heard adults say some of them. “Knock on wood,’ or ‘God willing and the creek don’t rise’—have you ever heard those phrases, Nia?”
“No,” I said, although I had. His whole voice was fake-syrupy.
“They’re superstitious phrases, and most people don’t really think they’ll keep away problems, but the alien phrase might mean something like that.”
“What do the other parts of it mean?” I was getting sort of interested.
“We’re not sure, but raising the ring finger starts a lot of alien sentences and seems to have something to do with… not luck, exactly, not fate, not victory, but all three rolled together, and all influenced by some other untranslatable concept.”
Dr. Porter didn’t know what it meant. Clueless, but he didn’t want to say so. I said, “Uh huh.”
“Try again, dear,” he said, like he was telling a first-grader to color inside the lines. “What else can you remember about this phrase?”
“Nothing,” I said.
And then—in the middle of the night—I did remember. I remembered H’raf giving me the bic!dul. He handed me the green blob and said, “But one more important, Nia. If this bic!dul makes trouble, you must to say this three turns.” H’raf raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” and twisted his thumb, said, “pof,” very softly, and said….some other words. What words? I couldn’t remember. I’d been too upset about his going away.
If this bic!dul makes trouble….
No. It couldn’t be. No.
H’raf and I weren’t supposed to play with the bic!dul away from adults. He wasn’t supposed to give it to me as a going-away gift.
No.
How exactly did the bic!dul work? How did it change shape?
And what part of Alpha Colony was being disassembled?
Nooooooo…
I stumbled out of bed and put on my clothes, feeling around in the dark for my shoes. Luna was turned off, in the corner. I crept through the kitchen, unlocked the door, and ran as fast as I could through Alpha Colony’s tunnels. Security cameras were watching me, of course, but maybe I could get where I needed to go before anyone noticed.
Maybe a different part of Alpha was being disassembled. Oh, please, let it be a different part of Alpha….
It wasn’t. I got to where the new bore tunnel started, and there were barriers and computers and a lot of machines I didn’t recognize and three people, even though it was the middle of the night.
“Hey!” Security said. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“It was me!” I gasped. “I started the disassemblers! I threw the bic!dul and a construction robot cemented it into the ceiling and it started to disassemble atoms! It was me!”
They stared at me like I was a zombie about to eat their brains. “The bic!dul!” I screamed. “It was the bic!dul! Don’t any of you speak Alienese?”
None of them did. They were one Security and two scientists from Earth, maybe experts about things that were coming apart. Which, right then, included me.
One of the scientists, a man with a beard that really needed combing, said, “Who are you? How did you get here?”
“I live here! I’m Nia Philips, and I started all this!”
“Come with me, miss,” Security said, grabbing my arm. “You don’t belong here.”
“Wait,” Uncombed Beard said. “Philips? The Angela Philips that’s on the Moon-NASA Council?”
“That’s my mom. But don’t call her! I can fix this! We don’t need Mom.” She would ground me for 50 years. “Just let me go into the tunnel!”
They didn’t, of course. They called Mom. They called Dr. Porter to find out what “bic!dul” meant. They probably would have called every single person on Alpha if Mom and Dad hadn’t shown up, panting and in their bathrobes.
“Nia!” Dad said. “Are you all right?”
Mom said “What is going on here? Nia, what have you done now?”
How unfair! I said hotly, “I didn’t do it—the robot did! I’m trying to fix it!”
“Fix what?” Dad said, just as Dr. Porter came riding up on one of the little train cars that carries rocks away from the new tunnel. He was all crammed in and peeking over the top. That would have been funny if I could have laughed right then. Which I couldn’t.
I said, “I was playing with the bic!dul down here—you know, the green blob that can change shape. H’raf gave it to me. I threw it for Luna when it was a ball. A robot picked it up and cemented it into the ceiling all sort of smashed flat, and now I think it’s up there making new baby disassemblers and taking apart the moon!”
Total silence. You never heard such silence—more quiet than outer space, more quiet than death. Until I burst into tears.
Dad put his arm around me. Mom turned red, trying to hold in her anger. The scientists turned pale. It was Dr. Porter, who I don’t even like, who said the only sensible thing. It was so sensible that I didn’t even care that he said it all fake-sweet.
“Nia—think hard, dear. The bic!dul is controlled by voice, isn’t it? That’s how you make it change shape? Did H’raf tell you any words to say if the bic!dul malfunctioned?”
“Yes!” I sobbed. “But I can’t remember all of the words! And anyway, the bic!dul won’t listen to me because it’s all smashed flat by your stupid robot!” The robot wasn’t really Dr. Porter’s, but by that time, I didn’t care.
A pale scientist said, “There may be an intact central mechanism. Or each disassembler may have the capacity to respond to reprogramming. It’s alien tech—we just don’t know!”
Dr. Porter said, “What part of the words do you remember?”
“You know—the words about luck and problems! The ones we talked about!”
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“And there were more words, as well.”
His voice was soothing; I stopped sobbing, as long as I didn’t look at Mom. She was going to ground me for a century. “Yes,” I said, “more words at the end, but I don’t remember them.”
“I know, dear. Listen to me. I’m going to say some words that we linguists have learned in Alienese, and I want you to tell me if any of them were what H’raf said to stop the bic!dul. Ready?”
“Y-yes.”
“Jelp click.”
“No, H’raf didn’t say that.”
“Kulpar with a wrist twist like this.”
“No.”
“Tarn.”
“Yes! What does it mean?”
“We aren’t sure. But it seems to have something to do with the way machinery operates in—”
“I remember!” I shouted. Dr. Porter’s questions squashed H’raf’s whole sentence back into my head, just like that stupid robot squashed the bic!dul into the tunnel ceiling. I raised my ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted my thumb, said, “pof,” very softly, and then, “tarn!-dal!-jump. You have to say the whole thing three times!”
Dr. Porter said to Security, “Did you record that?” She nodded. Dr. Porter went to the security screen, nodded, and told her to push aside the barrier in front of the tunnel. He stepped over the fallen rocks and stopped at the place where I said, “There.” Then he looked up at the ceiling, raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted his thumb, said, “pof,” very softly and then, “tarn!-dal!-jump.” He did it three times.
And I laughed.
Everybody looked shocked and Mom said, “Nia!” But I couldn’t stop laughing—he looked so funny, and he was doing it all wrong, and Heaven knows what he actually said. I couldn’t stop laughing! Later, Dad told me that was just a response to tension, but I think it was because Dr. Porter—serious, solemn, fake-sweet Dr. Porter—was talking to a ceiling with commands it could never understand in a million years. He jumped wrong, he clicked with his tongue wrong, he said the words wrong.
Dad said quietly, “Nia—you do it. Go on.”
The scientist without a beard said, “I don’t think—”
