There's an Alien in My Backpack

by Bruce Coville

CHAPTER 9 [TIM]

  THE ALIEN WHO CAME TO DINNER

  Mom burst out laughing. “You are the cutest thing I’ve seen since Tim was a baby!”

  “Mom!” I cried in horror.

  “Oh, shush, Tim. How you brutes could have even thought about sending this poor little fellow to some kind of galactic foster home is beyond me. He’ll stay right here with us until we can find out what happened to his people.”

  “Boy,” I said bitterly, “that wasn’t what you said the last time I brought home a puppy.”

  Mom scowled at me. “Puppies aren’t people, Tim. Besides, you’ve got a Veeblax now, so I think we can stop having the pet argument, okay? Would you like some dinner, Beebo? It sounds like you’ve had a rough day.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. Was she going to let us off the hook for the mess?

  “Pleskit, McNally, you can stay too, if you’d like. We obviously need to do some strategizing.” She looked around the room. “After the boys have done some cleaning.”

  “How about me?” asked the Grandfatherly One, sounding testy.

  Mom looked startled. “Of course you’re welcome to stay, Mr. Komquist. I just didn’t think you were able to eat.”

  “Well, I’m not. But it’s still nice to be asked.”

  Mom actually blushed a little. “We’ll be delighted to have you. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make you comfortable.”

  “Why, thank you, ma’am. Actually, just knowing you’ll take Beebo off our hands—so to speak, since in my case I don’t have any hands—does a great deal to ease my mind.”

  “Glad to be of service,” said Mom. “Now, you guys get this mess taken care of while I fix supper.”

  She went into the kitchen. I could hear her humming as she started to work.

  “What,” I said, “was that all about?”

  Beebo smiled. “What you humans call cuteness does have its useful aspects.”

  “I’d better call the embassy to let Shhh-foop know we’ll be eating dinner here,” said McNally.

  “You’ll have to use the regular phone system,” said Pleskit bitterly. “Tim and I no longer have a direct line.”

  McNally went into the hall. When he came back a few minutes later, he was smiling. “Ms. Buttsman was delighted with the news that we wouldn’t be back,” he reported. “I think she’s always happier when we’re gone.”

  “Ms. Buttsman doesn’t know a good thing when she sees it,” said Mom soothingly. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me and peel some potatoes, McNally?”

  McNally looked at us and rolled his eyes, then smiled and followed Mom into the kitchen. I had a sudden panicky moment when I wondered if I had just seen a spark of romance. I stuffed the idea down. It was entirely too weird to think of Mom being interested in someone—though if I had to pick a father replacement, I must say McNally would be high on my list.

  I went to get the dictionary and some telephone books to stack on a chair, so Beebo would have a place to sit.

  * * *

  “That sure smells good,” said the Grandfatherly One when supper was on the table and we were all sitting down.

  He was on the table too, stationed at one end like some sort of weird TV set.

  “It’s just hamburgers,” said Mom, blushing a little.

  “When you haven’t eaten real food for several years, even simple things become greatly appealing,” said the Grandfatherly One.

  “Some simple things are easier than others,” growled McNally, who was thumping the end of the ketchup bottle without any success.

  “I can help with that,” said Beebo eagerly. Hopping onto the table, he waved his hands at the bottle. It floated out of McNally’s grasp. Beebo made some more gestures. The bottle tipped bottom-up, shook itself a few times, and deposited a big glob of ketchup on McNally’s burger.

  “Anyone else?” Beebo asked eagerly.

  “I could use some,” I said, standing up and holding out my plate.

  Shake. Shake. Shake. Splat! Out came another blob of ketchup.

  Mom cleared her throat. We all looked at her. “Beebo, I hope you won’t think this is rude,” she said. “But on our planet we prefer not to have the guests stand on the table during dinner.”

  McNally almost snorted hamburger through his nose.

  Beebo batted his big eyes at Mom. “Gleep de reepdeep!” he exclaimed. “I am so sorry! Please forgive my rudeness.”

  He scrambled back into his seat.

  Mom looked at him intensely. “Was that… uh… magic you were just doing?”

  Beebo laughed. “Not magic, Mrs. Tompkins. Just a manipulation of the local gravitational and magnetic fields. It’s simple, if you have the right internal organs.”

  “Oh,” said Mom.

  * * *

  After supper we had another long talk, but about the only thing we decided was that Beebo should stay with us until we could figure out a way to contact his people.

  “I’ll make up a bed for you,” said Mom. “I can put it in one of Tim’s dresser drawers.”

  “You don’t need to go to all that trouble,” said Beebo.

  “It’s no trouble,” replied Mom sharply. “It will be easy, since there’s nothing else in them.”

  All right, so I’m supposed to put away my own clothes after she has washed and folded them. So sometimes I forget.

  Does that make me a bad person?

  You would have thought so when we took Beebo into my room.

  “Glasparaznik!” he cried. “Has some unfortunate and unforeseeable gravitational/magnetic event taken place here?”

  “No,” said Mom disgustedly. “This is the way it always looks.”

  “Fascinating,” said Beebo. “On my planet you could be executed for this.”

  “If that was a joke, it rates a two,” I said. “At best.”

  “Depends on your sense of humor,” replied Beebo with a smile.

  * * *

  Getting ready for bed was interesting. Beebo climbed back into the broken body suit and retrieved several items, including a weird-looking pair of alien pajamas and a tiny book.

  “What’s that?” I asked when he started writing in it.

  “My diary. Do you want to see it?”

  I was a little surprised that he would show me his diary, until I was actually holding it in my hands and realized, of course, that I could not read a word he had written.

  Even so, the little book was kind of interesting. The pages were tissue-thin yet incredibly tough. But they weren’t see-through like tissue. I wondered what they were made of.

  “The diary is part of my class assignment,” said Beebo, as I handed it back to him.

  It seemed kind of gallant, in a weird way, that he was continuing to work on his assignment even while he was stranded here.

  * * *

  As I climbed into bed that night, I was feeling pretty good. Another alien on the planet, and he was staying in my dresser. This was definitely a cool thing. Then, just as I was drifting off to sleep, Beebo said softly, “Tim, please take me to school with you on Monday.”

  I sat up. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “No. I’m afraid to stay alone.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “My people just don’t like being alone.”

  I didn’t like the idea. But Beebo climbed out of my dresser and scrambled up onto my bed. Sitting on my legs, he stared at me with those big eyes of his and said, “Please, oh please, please, please, Tim.” He clasped his hands together and continued to beg. “Please, please, please. I will be seized with terror if I am forced to stay here alone all day. Please take me with you. I will be good. I will be quiet. I will not cause any trouble. Just don’t leave me alone!”

  I consider myself a master of begging, but Beebo’s performance was impressive even by my standards. I could feel myself weakening.

  “But you’re supposed to stay a secret,” I said. “So
how can I take you to school?”

  Beebo thought for a second. “Put me in your backpack!” he cried, as if he had just thought of the most brilliant idea in the world.

  “You can’t stay in my backpack all day!”

  “It’s better than being here alone,” said Beebo, tears welling up in his huge eyes.

  I sighed. “All right, I’ll take you to school with me.”

  Dumber words were never spoken.

  CHAPTER 10 [PLESKIT]

  MORAL DILEMMA

  Tim called the embassy on Saturday morning. He didn’t call on the comm-device, of course, since that had been taken away from me. He called on the regular phone, which meant I could not see or smell him as we talked. I found this highly annoying. Communication is hard enough without having some of the basic clues taken away.

  “What is up, fellow star traveler?” I asked.

  “Well, uh, Beebo’s got a request. He wants to come to school with us on Monday.”

  “That’s a terrible idea!” I cried. “Tell him he can’t do it.”

  “Well, uh, I sort of already told him it was all right.”

  I tried not to let my sphen-gnut-ksher emit a bolt of energy that would fry the phone’s circuits. Lowering my voice, I said intensely, “Tim, have you gone crazy?”

  “Aw, you should have seen the little guy, Pleskit. He was so terrified of being left alone, I just couldn’t say no. He promised not to cause any trouble. I told him he could stay in my backpack.”

  I farted the small and fragrant fart of understanding. This, of course, did not communicate anything to Tim—partly because, with the inferior technology we were using, the smell was not transmitted, partly because Earthlings can barely interpret smell anyway. (For me, coming to this planet has been a little like moving to a world where no one can hear would be for most Earthlings.)

  As for my understanding of Beebo’s fears, that came naturally enough from the fact that Tim and I had been stranded on an alien planet ourselves. I knew from personal experience that terror can overwhelm a being caught in such a situation.

  That still did not mean I thought taking Beebo to school was a good idea—or even a possible one.

  “Have you forgotten the security devices?” I asked. “We couldn’t get him into the building even if we wanted to.”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. I figured you could work out some way to get the little guy past the scanners.”

  Resisting my urge to scream, I said, “Don’t you think I have enough problems with the Fatherly One as it is?” I took a deep breath. “Even if we could get Beebo into school, do you really think he can keep from letting people know he’s there?”

  “He’s promised,” said Tim.

  I didn’t say anything, but I wasn’t sure what a promise from Beebo was worth.

  “Don’t forget,” persisted Tim, “Beebo has at least as much reason to want to keep himself a secret as we do.”

  I thought about that. “True enough. All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Tim turned away from the phone to repeat my words to Beebo.

  In the background I heard a little voice squeak, “Ipsky pekoobies! Thank you, Pleskit!”

  It was such a delightfully happy sound that I almost forgot what a bad idea this was probably going to be.

  * * *

  No sooner had I finished talking to Tim than the dreaded Ms. Buttsman loomed up behind me. “Your Fatherly One wishes to speak to you, Pleskit,” she said, sounding happier than I like to hear her. It’s not that I don’t want Ms. Buttsman to be happy. It’s just that she seems to take great pleasure in my misery or discomfort.

  My sphen-gnut-ksher emitted a guilty odor. I could tell from the twitching of Ms. Buttsman’s nose that she detected the fruity aroma. Fortunately, she was not capable of understanding what it meant.

  * * *

  In the days since Tim and I had returned from our adventure in space, I had seen the Fatherly One far more frequently than I was used to. Alas, while that is something I had long desired, our meetings were not usually about pleasant matters.

  This one was no exception.

  “Pleskit, I need to make you aware of some things,” said the Fatherly One when I entered his office.

  I would have been happier if he had bothered to say hello first. Then I saw the degree of concern on his face and decided not to be upset about the lack of greeting.

  “What is troubling you, O Fatherly One?”

  “I have two things on my mind. Number one: the Galactic Inspection Team is arriving on Monday.”

  I felt my clinkus tighten. This would not be a good time for Beebo to act up.

  “I hardly need to stress that we must make a good impression on them,” said my parental unit. “Though there is residual goodwill for you across the galaxy for the part you played in thwarting Mikta-makta-mookta’s plan to destroy the first Grand Urpelli, there is also great resentment of our family because the second Grand Urpelli was included with the Earth franchise.” He paused, then said, “The second item I want to speak about is more troubling.”

  I barely managed to keep from blurting out, “What could be more troubling than that?”—which would have been a big mistake, since I should have found news of the team’s arrival merely interesting, not the terror-inducing statement that it actually was.

  The Fatherly One paused for some time before speaking. “My second concern is very private.”

  I wondered, briefly, if he had become involved in some romantic entanglement. Then, for a horrible moment, I wondered if he had somehow found out about Beebo. “Are you sure this is something I should know about?” I asked cautiously.

  “Yes. And you are the only one I am telling, for I do not know who else to trust.” He paused and gestured for me to step closer to him. I joined him in the command pod. At a signal from the Fatherly One, the pod closed. We were now completely shielded from anyone hearing us, either directly or with any kind of electronic equipment.

  “What is troubling you, O Fatherly One?” I asked again, more nervous than ever.

  CHAPTER 11 [PLESKIT]

  THE BACKPACK

  The Fatherly One paused a long time before speaking. When he finally did begin, I understood why he was so troubled. Looking at his hands, he said, “I fear we have another traitor on the embassy staff. Too much information has been leaking out. Most of it is not highly confidential, but people are far too aware of my comings and goings. I am concerned that someone is giving out this information. Or selling it.”

  “Do you have any idea who it is?” I asked, feeling a little sick at the idea. Even the dreadful Ms. Buttsman did not strike me as the sort to be a traitor.

  The Fatherly One tweaked his sphen-gnut-ksher. “No. I am smorgle-broken by the very thought of it. It was bad enough with Mikta-makta-mookta. I do not think I can stand it again.”

  I understood. Loyalty and honor are important concepts for us on Hevi-Hevi.

  Of course, that makes it especially disturbing when loyalty and honor seem to be at war with each other—as, for example, in the current situation where loyalty to the Fatherly One would prompt me to turn my back on Beebo (or even turn him in to the Inspection Team), yet honor seemed to say this was not the right thing to do.

  “Anyway,” said the Fatherly One, “I cannot share this fear with anyone else, for I am not sure who to trust. I just wanted to ask you to keep your nose open and be extra careful.”

  * * *

  I left the office of my parental unit feeling great uneasiness about the danger of a traitor on staff and more uncertain than ever about what I should do regarding Beebo.

  Fortunately—for Beebo, at least—as I was passing the chambers of Wakkam Akkim, I heard her performing a complex chant. Her voice was weirdly beautiful, and from the first snatch of words I could tell this was something I needed to hear. So I sat down outside her door to listen for a while. The chant turned out to be a kind of prayer or invocation, requesting strength to do what you thi
nk is right, no matter what the circumstances.

  When she was done, I sighed and got to my feet.

  Then I spent most of the weekend trying to devise a method for keeping the school’s scanners from detecting Beebo as we brought him into the building.

  * * *

  I finished the shielding device for Tim’s backpack late on Sunday afternoon. An hour or so later McNally and I asked Ralph-the-Driver to take us to Tim’s apartment, so I could install the shielding in Tim’s backpack. (We didn’t explain why we were going to Ralph, of course. I loved the fact that he never asked questions.)

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Tim when we arrived. “Beebo’s been wearing me out. Half the time he’s telling me jokes that have me laughing so hard, I can’t stand up—at least, the ones that I can figure out do. Alien humor can be very weird.”

  “It’s not weird; it’s profound,” said Beebo, who was sitting on the couch with a comic book floating in front of him. A page turned without him touching it.

  Tim rolled his eyes. “The rest of the time he’s offering to help me clean my room!”

  “It’s a matter of health and safety,” said Beebo.

  “Isn’t he adorable?” said Mrs. Tompkins.

  Tim rolled his eyes again.

  “Well, I’ve got the shield,” I said. “Where’s your backpack?”

  “Just a second. I’ll have to empty it out.”

  Watching Tim empty his backpack was like seeing the laws of physics violated. It was hard to believe so much stuff had been held in such a small space.

  “So that’s what happened to that pot holder!” said his mother, snatching a piece of fabric from the pile growing at Tim’s feet. “What’s it doing in here?”

  “I used it for padding when I had to take that egg to school,” said Tim.

  “That was three months ago!” said his mother sharply as she bent to retrieve another item from the pile. By the time he was done, she had accumulated a small stack of household goods that had found their way into Tim’s backpack and not been seen again until this moment, including a screwdriver, three spoons, the remote control for the TV set, a tube of lipstick (“I was going to use it for art class,” he explained), and a flowerpot.