The True Meaning of Smekday (24 page)

“No!” I said, and hoped Pig had the sense to stay low. The robot apparently couldn’t detect her inside the car.

J.Lo said no, too. Vicki didn’t say anything.

“ALL MUST ANSWER!” said the robot, and turned its flickering Gorg face toward Vicki. “ARE YOU IN POSSESSION OF A CAT OR CATS, OR KNOW WHERE A CAT OR CATS CAN BE FOUND?”

“Well, now, let me think…” said Vicki, smirking like she was eating cake in front of orphans.

“ALL MUST ANSWER!” said the robot, charging up to Vicki and Andromeda. It craned up to its full height and pressed near the baby. Vicki gave a sharp cry and tried to hold her out of its reach.

“POSSIBLE CAT!” screeched the robot. “INVESTIGATING!”

“It’s not a cat!” I said. “It’s a human! A human infant!”

The cat hunter eased away and relaxed its posture again.

“CORRECT. MESSAGE CONTINUES. ALL CATS MUST BE SURRENDERED TO A GORG OR GORG REPRESENTATIVE BY SUNDOWN TONIGHT! ANY HUMAN FOUND TO BE HARBORING A CAT AFTER THIS TIME WILL BE DISASSEMBLED! HIS CLOSEST NEIGHBORS WILL BE SEVERELY PUNCHED! MESSAGE STOPS.”

With that, the crab scurried away, its joints and feet making chewing and ticking noises across the pavement. I felt like I had an all-over sunburn.

“Thanks,” I told Vicki. “For not…”

She didn’t really look at me when she answered. She would have been looking at my hat if I had been wearing one.

“You’d better let your cat go,” she said flatly, “or turn it over before tonight. You can’t fight things.”

She turned to leave.

“Maybe I’ll pop in and check up on you later,” she added, and zipped off home.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We jogged alongside Slushious for a while, pushing it as fast as we could manage. Then we jumped in and rode until it ran out of momentum, and we had to jog again.

“What does she keep having to ‘check’?” I said. “You’d think we needed watering or something.”

We coasted along in silence for a minute. A big ball of burgundy ponytails and black braids rolled across the road ahead of us.

“Look,” I said halfheartedly. “Another one of those tumbleweeds made out of old hair weaves.”

“Tumbleweave,” said J.Lo.

I frowned at the rearview mirror as we slowed. “Were people this crazy before you guys invaded?”

“I was not around beforeto us guys invaded.”

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Ah. Then the answer is yes.”

We opened our doors and propelled the car forward again. More cat hunters moved through the town, down at the ends of streets where the air shimmered.

“J.Lo?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not trying to be bossy all the time. It just comes out that way. You know?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe that’s what makes me crazy. Always having to have it my way. Maybe that’s what makes both me
and
Vicki crazy.”

“Chief Shouty Bear is perhaps crazy,” said J.Lo after we’d hopped inside again.

“Yeah,” I said. “Or he wants people to think so.”

The tall fence appeared in our windshield, and Lincoln the Great Dane sprang from it and turned circles around the car as we pulled up. The Chief’s place was on a small hill, just a bump, really, but it made it difficult to keep Slushious in one place.

“Here,” said the Chief as he emerged from the yard and propped open big double doors. Then he grabbed our front bumper and helped us move the car inside.

J.Lo and I were panting, and we sat down against Slushious in a thin slip of shade. The Chief disappeared into the house and came back with water.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Should’ve offered yesterday. Not hospitable of me.”

I gulped down the water.

“Well…not to be rude, but you don’t really have a reputation for hospitality around here. I mean, I guess it’s a part of your…of who you—”

He stood staring down at me for a moment, his face dark with the sun behind his straw hair.

“The shouting, you mean.”

“Right,” I said. “What’s the deal with that?”

“Hobby,” said the Chief. “I’m retired.”

“You didn’t raise your voice once when it was just the three of us. Well, you did a bit during your whole carnival spiel. Which could use some work, if you ask me.”

He huffed.

“But then Vicki and Kat show up and you’re all, ‘GO AWAY, TREATY-BREAKER! DON’T…UM…DON’T—”

“I never said ‘treaty-breaker.’”

“Yeah, well, that was the basic theme, anyway.”

“I only usually shout at the white people,” he said. “Tradition. I’ve got no beef with you.”

“I’m
half
white,” I said, folding my arms.

“Hrrm. Which half?”

I blinked. “Uh…dunno. Let’s say it’s from the waist down.”

Chief Shouting Bear nodded. “Deal. I only hate your legs.”

We looked at each other for a moment, during which I could hear him breathe like an old house.

“I’m Gratuity,” I said. “People call me Tip. And that’s Pig in the car.”

“Frank,” he answered, and offered his hand. I shook it.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought…I heard…”

“You heard my name was Chief Shouting Bear,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You can call me whatever you want, Stupidlegs.”

“Deal.”

J.Lo approached and tapped the Chief’s elbow.

“Hey, Spook,” said the Chief. J.Lo handed him a small card I’d helped him write. With the way the Roswell BOOBs looked at him every time he opened his mouth, we agreed he shouldn’t push his luck with the Chief.

“My name is JayJay,” read the Chief in a monotone. “I am ten years old. I have taken a vow of silence and wear this costume in solidarity with our Boovish cousins in their fight against the wicked Gorg.”

The Chief gave the card back. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Hell, I wore a feather headdress for a while in the sixties.”

I popped the hood on Slushious, careful not to make all the tires fall off, while the Chief closed and latched the gates again.

“You say a Boov modified this for you?” he asked as he stepped up.

“Yeah. In Pennsylvania.”

“An’ it’s broken.”

“Right. Still floats, but doesn’t drive anymore.”

“An’ it was broken yesterday, when you tried to sell it to me?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Hrm.”

He poked at hoses and unfastened gaskets. I sincerely hoped he wasn’t doing anything dangerous, because J.Lo was suddenly nowhere to be seen. I expected he’d slipped off to examine the teleclone booth again.

“Should be something here,” the Chief said, pointing to the housing for the Snark’s Adjustable Manifold. “That’s how come it won’t drive.”

I blinked. That
was
how come it didn’t drive, but how could he know that? Of course, there was sort of a gaping hole in the middle of the hood. It wouldn’t take a rocketpod scientist to see Slushious was missing something.

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” I said. “We had to get rid of that part after it started exploding too much. How’d you guess?”

“Could tell you,” said the Chief, “but then I’d have to start shouting again.”

I frowned.

“That’s a weird thing to say.”

“You’re telling me.”

I’d thought Lincoln was off somewhere with J.Lo, but suddenly he was at our sides, barking his head off. The Chief had his head buried under the hood, but he looked back over his shoulder.

“Lincoln—what’s wrong with you?” he said, and spat. “Doesn’t usually bark much.”

“Chief,” I said, my voice thin.

Gorg jetpackers buzzed over Roswell like flies at a picnic. And one of them had broken away from the rest to head right for the junkyard.

Chief Shouting Bear saw him too, and sped immediately toward the house.

“Gotta move the booth,” he said. “You hide under the car.”

“Chief!”

He skidded to a halt and looked back.

“They’re hunting cats,” I breathed.

A moment passed, and he rushed back. Pig didn’t want to leave the car with Lincoln near, so I had to pull her out with a floor mat still attached to her feet. The Chief scooped her up and ran off again.

“Under the car!” he ordered.

He didn’t have to tell me a third time. I dropped to my hands and knees and slid under Slushious, choking on dust.

It was very quiet. I only noticed the birds had been singing when they abruptly stopped.

I don’t know what I’d expected it to feel like, with Slushious floating over me. I don’t think I’d expected anything at all. But it was cold, like standing in front of a refrigerator.

Somewhere behind me I heard exactly the sound of a Gorg wearing a jetpack land in the yard.

I tried not to breathe. I tried not to think about the way my lungs felt scratchy with New Mexico dirt. Then it was suddenly bright. Slushious was shoved aside, and I squinted up at the ugliest face in the universe.

J.Lo disagrees with me about this. He says the title of Most Ugliest goes to the Goozmen of the Crab Nebula, which are apparently just blobs of carbon. But I could see how a blob of carbon might look nice with soft lighting. What stood over me was a Gorg, and he looked like a half ton of anger in bicycle shorts.

He was a dull olive green, with bloodred splotches around his head and shoulders. Here and there he had thick purplish plates growing out of his skin like giant fingernails. If creatures really evolve to suit their surroundings, then the Nimrogs surely were a race of backstabbers, the way their backsides were covered in armor and horns.

I didn’t know if I should stay down or get up, but then he helped me decide by nearly yanking my arm out at the shoulder. I found my feet but avoided looking him in the eyes.

“HUMAN!” Gorg barked. When he spoke, his frowning mouth gaped like a fish. “WHERE IS THE STOLEN BOOTH!”

Oh, I thought. My eyes began to water. The stink coming off him could perm your hair.

“Um…what now?”

“ARE YOU LOUD BEAR CHIEFTAIN?!” said Gorg, cracking his knuckles. They made a sound so low you could feel it in your bones.

“Who?”

“CHIEFTAIN LOUD BEAR MAN!”

Gorg paced around me, scanning the piles of junk and scrap. He seemed especially taken with Bathhenge. I didn’t know where the Chief was hiding Pig and the booth, but I didn’t think he’d had enough time.

“I, uh, I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. “You must have the wrong place.”

He trod forward on thick legs and bent over me. I did my best to look calm on the outside, but my insides were dancing and throwing off sparks like a fork in a microwave.

“IT IS NOT THE WRONG PLACE.
YOU
ARE THE WRONG PLACE!”

“Um.”

“I WAS TOLD TO FIND THE SHOUTING ANIMAL MAN IN HIS GARBAGE COOP!”

“I’m sorry, but—
I’m sorry
!” I yelped and skipped backward as Gorg advanced on me. “You were given bad information. Probably some human’s fault.”

“I AM PRINCIPAL ANGER COORDINATOR ASSOCIATE-OF-THE-MONTH GORG FOUR-GORG! HUMANS WILL GIVE ME BAD INFORMATION AT THEIR PERIL!”

He didn’t look like a principal. He looked like something Hercules ought to be wrestling on the side of a vase.

Gorg bent further and raised a fist over my head. He’s bluffing, I thought. It’s just to scare me into changing my story. To make me blurt something out. I straightened up as tall as I could and breathed through my mouth. I looked him right in the eye. And when I couldn’t bear that, I looked him right in the nose.

You have a ridiculous nose, I thought, tears running down my face. Look at it. It’s like an oak leaf made out of steak.

And suddenly it was as if I had mental powers. Gorg’s nose twitched. It twitched again. He scrunched his whole face, and his nose closed up like a Venus flytrap.

Then his torso snapped back and forward again, and he made the weirdest, wettest noise I ever heard. It must have been a sneeze, but it sounded like an elephant being forced through a drinking straw.

“WHERE IS IT?” Gorg howled, looking at my feet.

I looked too, confused. If he meant the booth, I sure wasn’t standing on it.

“Where is what?”

“ANSWER ME, BOY! THE GORG ARE NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH!”

I scowled. “I’m a girl.”

He leaned in close, looking me over, breathing on my hair. Something like molasses ran from his bat face.

“YOU ALL LOOK THE SAME.”

“Ha! You’re one to talk.”

“YES, WE ARE!” he bellowed. “THE GORG ARE GREAT ONES FOR TALKING! TALKING AND POUNDING!”

“Hey!” came a shout from the house, and I exhaled. Later I’d wish the Chief had stayed hidden, but at the time all I felt was relief. If my thoughts could have formed words they’d have said,
Please, treat me like a child. Come save me.

“Leave her be!” shouted Chief Shouting Bear, striding toward us. “Y’wanna deal with someone, you deal with—”

Gorg’s great trunk of an arm swung fast and wide, and struck the Chief in the head. He was felled with one blow.

I’m sorry for that word “felled.” I only looked it up just now. I had to have just the right one to do this justice. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn’t write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine.

The Gorg
felled
Chief Shouting Bear. The Chief’s legs shot up from under him, and he came down hard on his back with a sound louder than I thought a human body could make. Then he lay there. There was a red X on his forehead, getting larger, and it was the only thing that moved.

“DO NOT BE IMPUDENT, BOY. THE GORG CAN DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO YOU.”

I had been thinking of something clever to say, but now that part of my brain was static. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

Gorg squinted some more at me, then nodded, satisfied. He turned on his heel and thundered off like an angry building. He turned Slushious over and scattered the piles of scrap metal. He threw washing machines like huge dice and cracked each bathtub with a blow from his fist. Large sections of the outer fence fell under a volley of tires and engine blocks. Then he knocked a wall of the Chief’s house in with a rusted-out town car and took the rest of it apart, piece by piece. When there was no longer any house standing, I wondered what had become of J.Lo and Pig. And Lincoln. And the booth. Gorg tore the basement door off its hinges and squeezed down the stairs. Angry noises roared up from below until he emerged a minute later. Finally, with everything in ruins, Gorg looked around to where I sat pressing the Chief’s hat to his head. Then he grunted and went back into the sky, where he belonged.