George Brown and the Protector (9 page)

“Emberly!” said the protector reprovingly.
“It’s not polite to pounce on people when you’re in human shape.
You’re a girl now, not a furball.” Emberly turned away with a sulky
look on her face.

The protector helped George to his feet.
“You’ll have to forgive Emberly,” he said quietly so she wouldn’t
overhear. “Although she’s 130 Praetorian years old, she’s still
just a child, and it’s not easy for her to adjust to being a member
of a different race.”

George turned to see Emberly staring at him,
a frown on her face. Suddenly she smiled, walked up to him, and
jabbed a finger in his ear.

“Hey!” yelled George, jumping back. “What’re
you doing?”

“You’ve got big ears,” Emberly giggled.

“Emberly, that’s not polite,” said the
protector with a frown. Then he turned curiously to George. “Or is
it o.k. on your planet to poke people in the ear, then tell them
their ears are big? I’ve never quite been able to learn all of the
strange customs you have here.”

“No, it’s not normal at all,” replied
George.

“Why not?” she asked innocently. “It’s true,
isn’t it?" Then she turned to look at the Protector. "You told me
yesterday humans try to be honest, and he does have big ears.”

“Yes, you should always try to be honest,”
said the protector patiently, “but that doesn’t mean you go around
poking people in the ear and telling them things that are rude or
upsetting. If you can’t say something positive, don’t say anything
at all.”

Emberly scowled, deep in thought. Then
suddenly she smiled again and looking up at George said, “I’ll bet
you can hear really good with those big ears of yours! That was a
positive thing to say, wasn’t it?”

The protector threw up his hands in
exasperation, but George just laughed. “I can hear just fine,” he
said to Emberly. “But my ears are about the same size as
yours.”

A look of horror spread over Emberly’s face
and she clapped her hands over her ears. “I’ve got big ears too!”
she screamed, then ran over and tried to hide behind the
Volkswagen.

The protector looked at George and shrugged.
“Praetorians don’t have ears,” he said simply. Then he turned back
to the control box on the transporter and made a few more
adjustments.

“All right!” he cried out. “We’re ready to go
to Xhenxou, China!” He rubbed his chin. “Or at least, that’s where
I hope we end up, if I set it right. But no matter. Hop in, and
let’s get going.”

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his
stomach, George climbed into the back seat of the Volkswagen.
Emberly crawled in next to him, still holding her hands over her
ears, and avoiding his eyes. The protector sat in the passenger
seat.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, turning to
face George and Emberly. “Have one of these.” He handed each of
them a stick of chewing gum in a red wrapper. “It’s mandarin
Chinese flavored chewing gum – good for 24 hours of fluent language
as long as you keep chewing on it. Try it. It tastes like fried
rice.”

George took the stick of red gum, and stared
at it in fascination.

“What do I do with this one?” asked Emberly,
forgetting her ears for the moment and pulling a wad of bluish gum
out of her mouth.

“That’s English gum,” said the protector to
George. “Emberly is still learning your language, so I thought I’d
make it easy for her today. But we’ll all be chewing Chinese now,
so it won’t be needed. Put it in here,” he said to Emberly,
producing a small plastic garbage sack from somewhere.

“You mean, if I chew this, I’ll be able to
speak Chinese?” George said in amazement.

“Yep,” replied the protector. “And understand
it too, as long as the gum is in your mouth. But of course, you
won’t notice anything different. It will seem to you as if you’re
still hearing and talking English.”

“Really?” said George.

“Agubordif?” said Emberly.

“There, you see?” said the protector.
“Emberly took her English gum out of her mouth and is now speaking
Praetorian – at least until she starts chewing some of this—“and he
handed her a stick of the red Chinese chewing gum.

Emberly ripped it open and jammed it into her
mouth. She made several loud smacking noises as she started
chewing. Then she rolled her eyes happily.

“She likes gum,” the protector said
confidentially. Then he opened a stick of gum for himself and put
it in his mouth, pointing for George to do the same. As George
started chewing, he was amazed that it really did taste exactly
like fried rice.

“Now,” said the protector, “it probably
doesn’t sound like I’m talking to you in Chinese, does it?”

“No,” replied George in disappointment.

“But I am,” said the protector with a smile.
“Take the gum out for a second and you’ll see.”

George took the gum out of his mouth and
heard the protector say something unintelligible that sounded like
it was Chinese.

“Wow!” he said, putting the gum back in.

“Pretty handy, eh?” said the protector. “I’ve
got gum for most languages.” Then he added confidentially, “You
should try Italian. It tastes just like pizza.”

“And now, on to China!” cried the protector.
Ant number 4 started the car, and started to inch forward toward
the transporter door.

“Will it hurt to go through the transporter?”
asked George with mounting apprehension as he watched the door draw
nearer.

“Not at all,” replied the protector with a
laugh. “It’s just like driving through a tunnel. You won’t feel a
thing.”

“Where will we end up?” asked George
curiously. “Is there a transporter in China too?”

“I entered the coordinates into the
controller – it will find a secluded spot where no one will see and
will automatically create a transporter opening for us to come in
at. Both the opening there and the door here will be cloaked and
made invisible as soon as we go through so no one will see them if
they happen to chance by. They’ll stay that way until we’re ready
to come back.”

Before George could say anything else they
were going through the transporter. Rainbows of color danced in
patches before his eyes, and washed across the faces of the
protector, Ant number 4 and Emberly. George’s skin tingled as if
thousands of ants were crawling over him. And then everything went
completely dark.

CHAPTER 14: China

They were
through the transporter door, and to George’s surprise, it was
nighttime and very dark. There were only a few stars visible.
George saw that they were in a small gully with bushes on either
side, with not much else to be seen. However, the air was noisy
with many car horns blowing nearby, so he knew they must be near a
road.

“Everybody here honks their horn all the
time, even when they don’t need to,” said the protector in a raised
voice so he could be heard over the blaring horns. “There’s so many
people and bikes all over that cars and buses have to honk to let
people know they’re there, so no one gets run over.”

Slowly, Ant Number 4 pulled the car forward
over the rise of the gully. George saw a large number of lights in
the distance and some low buildings. There was a road nearby and
George could see that there were indeed a large number of people on
bikes, even in the dark, heading in both directions along the road,
with a few honking cars and buses weaving slowly between them.

“Gosh,” said George, “I didn’t realize it
would be dark here.”

“Yep,” the protector replied from the front
seat. “It’s night here already, since China is nine hours behind
California at this time of year. But they’re a day ahead since you
have to cross the international dateline to get here. So I guess
you could say that California is behind China in time, not the
other way around.”

“If it’s so late, how come there are so many
people out?” asked George.

“The Chinese generally take a little nap
after lunch, which refreshes them to stay up late into the night,”
said the protector. “You’ll find the whole city is far busier than
an American city at this hour.”

Suddenly, Emberly pointed at George. “Your
hair changed color and your eyes have changed. But you’ve still got
big ears!”

George stared at Emberly in shock. While the
dim light from the nearby buildings didn’t allow him to see much,
he could tell that her blond curly hair was now black and straight,
her freckles were gone and in every other way she looked like a
Chinese girl!

“We are now Chinese,” said the protector
calmly. “Even Ant Number 4.”

George saw that it was true. Both Ant Number
4 and the protector looked like Chinese men. Looking in the rear
view mirror, George saw that his own appearance had changed
dramatically. He also had black hair and looked very Chinese.

“Our car has changed too,” said the
protector. “Volkswagen Bugs aren’t as common here as they used to
be, so we are now riding in a more typical vehicle for China.”

Looking around at the interior of the car,
George saw that the Volkswagen Bug had apparently been transformed
into some type of yellow mini car or van with bench seats.

The protector smiled at George from the front
seat. “I’ll bet even your own mother probably wouldn’t recognize
you now,” he said calmly.

At the thought of his mother, George looked
impulsively at his cell phone. It was still on, but George doubted
it would work if she tried to call from half way around the world.
It was fascinating to think that he had come so far from home in
the blink of an eye.

“Will we be here long?” asked George. “Not
that I want to leave,” he added hastily. “I’m just afraid my Mom
might try to call, and she wouldn’t be able to reach me.”

“That is a problem,” agreed the protector.
“But we shouldn’t be here long. I’m just going to take a few
pictures and do a few quick tests on the fallen star, and then
we’ll need to ask around a little to see if anyone found an Uth
rock like yours.”

Turning to Ant Number 4, the protector said,
“Head for those lights over there.” He pointed to what looked like
several spotlights in a nearby field. “I’ll bet that’s where the
fallen star is.”

As they approached the field with spotlights,
George could see street venders pulling carts of food or clothing,
and a large number of people on foot or riding bicycles. All of
them had black hair and dark eyes. George could now see why the
protector had set the gauge to transform them all, so they wouldn’t
stand out.

At the brightly lit field, they saw a large
number of men in army uniforms carrying rifles. They were
patrolling along a rope fence that had been set up along the edge
of the field. A few curious spectators stood outside the rope,
staring at the fallen star in the center of the field. It looked
exactly like the one George had found. Two officials were examining
it, with several armed guards standing behind them.

“Drat,” murmured the protector. “I should
have known it would be heavily guarded here. I’m afraid we won’t be
able to get very close to it. A few pictures from the outside of
the rope fence will have to be good enough. But it looks just like
yours, which I’ve been able to test and examine.”

“But what about the Uth rock?” asked George.
“Does the army have it?”

“I don’t know,” said the protector. “If they
do, they wouldn’t tell us. Let’s just hope if they do have it, they
don’t find out how powerful it is.”

Ant Number 4 parked the car a short distance
from the roped field. As they got out, the protector said, “Stay on
this side of the rope fence, and don’t do anything to make the
guards suspicious. If there’s any trouble, let me do the
talking.”

George saw that the protector had put on a
pair of glasses, but hadn’t taken anything else with him out of the
car.

“What about the camera?” asked George.
“Weren’t you going to take some pictures?”

The protector smiled. Raising his hand, he
tapped his glasses. “This is my camera,” he said quietly. “I have a
feeling they wouldn’t approve of my trying to take pictures of it
with my Walmart camera. The army here is very protective and
suspicious.”

Ant Number 4 stayed in the car while George,
Emberly and the protector walked over to the roped field.

George could feel the eyes of several guards
on him as he approached, and tried to act as normal as possible.
This was hard to do with his heart thumping so loudly in his chest.
Emberly on the other hand skipped along as if going to a picnic,
stopping to look at the cart of each street vender that was going
by, and staring at each bike rider that passed.

George noticed that the protector seemed to
spend a lot of time adjusting his glasses. The protector walked
along the rope fence for a ways, getting a look at the fallen star
from several different angles.

Looking back toward the car, George noticed a
glow on the horizon that must be coming from the center of the
city. The bikes and honking cars continued winding along the nearby
road in a steady stream in spite of the lateness of the hour. Did
people here ever go to bed?

Turning back to the field, George saw that
the protector had gone all the way to the far corner of the roped
field, where he continued to stare at the fallen star. Emberly was
nearby, closely examining the contents of a street vender’s cart,
which appeared to be full of eggplants. She picked one up, turning
it over in her hands. The street vender looked at her expectantly,
probably thinking that she intended to buy it. With sudden
apprehension over what Emberly might do, George hurried
forward.

He was too late. Without warning, Emberly
took a huge bite of the eggplant. Almost immediately she screwed up
her face in disgust and spit it out on the shirt of the shocked
street vender.

“Your purple rock tastes terrible!” she
cried. Before any of the startled onlookers could do anything, she
pushed the cart over and egg plants scattered in all directions.
George stumbled on one and nearly fell as he rushed forward.