The True Meaning of Smekday (34 page)

“I WAS TOLD TO GO TO THE LARGE OFFENSIVELY COLORED BUILDING. THE BUILDING WHERE HUMANS WHO ARE BAD AT MATH GIVE AWAY THEIR MONEY! THIS IS THAT PLACE! BRING ME GRATUITUCCI!”

I slipped through the last door and out to the blinding air, stumbled down off the loading dock, and sprinted around to the emergency exit where Slushious was parked. J.Lo was already there in his costume, tying the telecloner to the top of the car.

“I have Pig,” he whispered. “We should drive away—Gorg might smell me.”

“Okay. Where’s my mom?”

J.Lo looked at me, then back at the casino.

I’d left her again.

“We have to help her.”

“We have to hide away the telecloner!” gasped J.Lo. “He will search out here!”

I swiveled around and noticed the big white poker tent lying rumpled and deflated on the ground.

“Looks like he already searched there. C’mon.”

We drove up to the edge of the tent, and I lifted the surprisingly heavy canvas while J.Lo drove Slushious underneath. I was already running back to the emergency exit before J.Lo even crawled out from under the tent. I got close enough to see that the door had been torn off its hinges.

“No,” I whispered. “No no no.”

I ducked into our apartment and saw it had been trashed. The sinks were overturned and leafs of scorched books fluttered through the air. But Mom was gone. There was no sign of her.

I bolted through our apartment door, to see a crowd of people staring out the front of the casino.

“Gratuity!” said Joachim as I approached. “Hold on—”

I ignored him and forced my way through the crowd, just in time to see two Gorg strapping jetpacks to their backs. One of them had my mom thrown over his shoulder.

“QU LU EHED SEG FIP’W AR NI’IZS
IHEX?”
said the Gorg holding Mom as he slapped the other Gorg across the face.

“FUD,”
said the other, poking and then punching the first Gorg in the arm.
“NAG IG’F TAD’Q GU VEF’G FGAB, LU W’ZO
?”

“Your mom…she said she was you,” explained Joachim.

Then something amazing happened. The Gorg holding Mom made a noise.

“Was that a sneeze?” someone asked.

J.Lo arrived just in time to see the other Gorg sneeze, too. Then both of them were in fits, sneezing back and forth as they fiddled with their jetpacks.

Mom raised her head and looked right at me. Then the rockets ignited, and all three of them disappeared into the darkening sky.

I was breathing hard. Everyone around started trying to console me and put their hands on my shoulder, but I only wanted them to go away.

“Say,” J.Lo whispered, “they sneeze near to any person who has spent a lot of time around a Boov. Did you notice? But…the Boov never did make them sick before.”

“No, the
Boov
never did,” I agreed.

And suddenly I had a plan after all.

“Oh, are they gonna get it,” I said as we soared across the desert. “I will destroy them. You can’t kidnap my mom and expect me not to destroy you. I would have destroyed the Boov, but you gave her back just in time.”

“Thank goodness,” said J.Lo. “Explain, please, again about the cats.”

“The Gorg are allergic to cats! Seriously allergic! You saw how they were around Mom.”

“But Tipmom is not a cat.”

“We have cat hair
all over us.
Trust me. When you own a cat it’s unavoidable. And why else would the Gorg go to so much trouble to get rid of all of them? And Mom—Mom said she sat right next to some Gorg before we arrived, and they didn’t sneeze at all. But after we brought Pig into the casino? Boom!”

“Boom!” shouted J.Lo. “Boom!”

“Thank God we didn’t lose Pig that night. Thank God we kept her safe.”

“But whereto are we going?”

“Somewhere secret,” I said as I steered Slushious through camps of scattered tents. “Somewhere we can hatch our plan.”

“This is exciting,” said J.Lo. “We are sneaky agent men, like Bond James Bond.”

“I don’t know where you pick this stuff up.”

All traces of the city were far behind us when we neared a rustic sign that read “Old Tucson Studios.”

“Oh, perfect,” I said.

I pulled Slushious into the center of a Wild West ghost town in the middle of the mountains. There were authentic-looking saloons and general stores and a Spanish church lining the dusty street.

“This should do,” I said.

“Now we can teleport to the Gorg bases or their ship,” said J.Lo, “and find Tipmom and bring her home!”

“We’re going to do a lot more than that,” I said.

“Yes? What are we going to do?”

I grinned and said, “Feedback loop.”

“Feedback loop?”

“Feedback loop.”

I stood in the middle of the street, with J.Lo eyeing me nervously. If I’d had a six-shooter I could have looked just like Clint Eastwood, but the only thing I was staring down was a teleclone booth. Plus, I was wearing a World War II army helmet, so the image was shot.

The helmet was way too big for me, but my hair kept it in place. I had a handful of aspirin—the cold-expanding foam kind—for emergencies. The Gorg telecloner had cloned them from the last remaining pill in J.Lo’s toolbox. It worked. The aspirin were complex things no Boov cloner could make, but we’d made them.

In the last twenty minutes, J.Lo had put the machine back together and inspected it over and over. I’d stroked Pig and looked through the Chief’s boxes.

“I have a signal,” J.Lo had said finally, next to the softly humming machine. “We are connected to the Gorg computer.”

So we’d tested it by making aspirin, and now I was standing in front of it, wondering how I got here.

“There are signals from many other teleclone booths. Gorg bases. Twelve bases in Arizona, more elsewheres.”

“I guess we should just try the closest one.”

“I should go,” J.Lo said. “I should be the one to test it. It is my fault if it fails.”

“If it fails,” I said, “you’re the only one who can possibly fix it. So I have to go.”

In my other hand was a pebble. If I managed to teleport anywhere without getting turned into milk shake I would send it back so J.Lo would know to follow with Pig.

“Okay…okay,” I said, shaking out my hands. “Okay.” I was breathing hard and fast, probably hyperventilating. I was suddenly thinking that maybe I would just faint. Then I wouldn’t have to teleport. Nobody could expect you to teleport after you fainted, it was like an unwritten rule, it was fairly common knowledge that you were never asked to teleport after—

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Anything else you can tell me?”

“Hm. Well, it would be betters if you were chewing gum, your ears will probably pop—”

“AHHH!” I shouted, then ran for the cage, and crossed my fingers, and jumped.

There was a flash of light in my skull.

There was a loud snap.

My ears popped.

It was utterly dark. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even feel my own body. And I thought, Great—I died right when I was in the middle of something.

I couldn’t feel my body because the teleportation makes you numb for a bit but I wouldn’t know this until I started tingling all over a few seconds later, like I was carbonated. First I stretched my jaw to clear my ears, because I heard voices.

One of them was familiar. It had that TV announcer sound, but it was more of an off-camera, demanding-more-doughnuts-in-his-dressing-room sort of voice.

I remembered I had a flashlight, so I drew it out of my pocket and nervously switched it on against my hand. Through the red glow of my fingers I could see a curtain drawn in front of me. I edged around it. I was in a very small room. Past the curtain there was a mop and bucket. There was a dustpan. And there was a familiar dark wood door with a brass knob, confirming what I’d only just guessed.

I was in Daniel Landry’s broom closet.

Five minutes later I jumped back through the telecloner and saw the flash and heard the snap and landed, ears popping, back in the ghost town. I expected J.Lo to be right in front of me, and panicked when he wasn’t there.

“Oh, boy. Oh, boy—J.Lo! J.LO!” I turned. “How does this thing shut off…how does it—”

J.Lo’s head poked out the car window.

“We have to shut this down!” I shouted. “How does it turn off?”

“You are alive!”
J.Lo sang.

“Focus, J.Lo! How do I shut it down?”

“What? Oh. Green thing!”

There was, thankfully, only one green thing, shaped like a racquetball on a golf tee. I grabbed at it, wondering if I was meant to squeeze or pull or push or what, but it instantly gave a gassy noise and deflated as the booth stopped humming. I sat back and breathed, my head no longer filled with visions of Gorg armies pouring into the moonlit street after me. Pig brushed against my legs. Then I noticed J.Lo at my shoulder.

“Where was the
pebble
?!” he shouted.
“What about the pebble?”

I hadn’t thrown it back to tell him the booth worked. I’d been too busy eavesdropping, and I said so.

“I thought Tip was dead! Or in troubles! And I could do nothing!
Nothing!
”

“Why were you in the car?” I asked.

“I was about to leave. I was to try driving to find you.”

“Thanks.”

“But the booth, it worked? Why did you turn it off?”

“There were Gorg on the way. I thought they might teleport here.”

“Then they saw you?”

“No,” I said. “Listen. I got there, and it was all dark, and I could hear voices, right? And that’s when I knew I was in Dan Landry’s broom closet.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Get out of town.”

“It’s true!” I said. “And Landry was shouting at someone, shouting, ‘We had a deal!’ and ‘They were only questions, I wasn’t accusing you of anything!’”

“What questions?” asked J.Lo.

“Well, wait a second. It gets worse. Then a Gorg voice answers—”

J.Lo gasped.

“—then a Gorg voice answers, ‘THE FESTIVAL WILL PROCEED AT SUNRISE. THE HUMANS WILL BE COUNTED AND SORTED.’

“And Landry says, ‘She was just a kid. Kids get upset. Now you’ve kidnapped her?’ So the Gorg admits they screwed up and got Mom instead, but they still want me ’cause I fit the description of a girl who
stole
something from them.”

J.Lo muttered something in Boovish.

“But here’s the kicker,” I said. “The Gorg says, ‘WE WILL HONOR OUR PROMISE. YOU WILL HAVE YOUR POWER. WE WILL SEE YOU BECOME LEADER OF YOUR PLANET.’ And then some other Gorg chuckle, and he says, ‘WE WILL RELEASE THE MOTHER OF GRATUITUCCI AFTER THE FESTIVAL.’ And now the other Gorg are laughing, you know, because there isn’t going to
be
any ‘after the festival.’ That’s when I came back through the booth.”

J.Lo shook his head. “He was just wanting to be leader. He wanted to be the king of Earth and call it Danland.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Except, what about all that stuff he said to me about the Gorg leaving soon? What if he really believed that? Maybe he really thought by cooperating he could keep more people alive until the Gorg left on their own.”

“Or maybe he is just a poomp, pardon my language.”

“Maybe. Anyway, that wasn’t a Gorg base. But right before I teleported back, it sounded like the Gorg were going to use the broom closet to leave, and I was afraid they’d get here right behind me.”

“We will try another one, then,” said J.Lo.

“The next closest booth?”

“Hm. I am thinking, why not the strongest, instead of the closest. The strongest signal. This would more likelies be an important base.”

J.Lo tuned the booth, and we gathered our stuff. We each had enough aspirin to cover Mount Everest. J.Lo put up his helmet, and I still had mine. I had a backpack full of cat treats and my camera, and J.Lo had his toolbox, as usual.

“And looksee,” said J.Lo. “The talkie-walkies. I have fixed them up with power cells. Now we can talk
and
walk. J.Lo to Tip, J.Lo to—”

He was holding them no more than ten inches apart, so his gravely, squawking message got echoed back and forth and made the Worst Noise In The World. And I’ve heard Gorg sneeze.

I tried to put the walkie-talkie in my cargo pants. It made me feel like I had a peg leg, so I put it in my bag instead. The four-foot-long antenna stuck up through a gap in the zipper and bobbed as I moved.

“I can’t
believe
people used to run around with these while getting shot at,” I said, because I didn’t know what I’d be doing a half hour later.

J.Lo stared at the antenna. “You look cool.”

“I look like an RC car.”

“Yes. I do not know what that is.”

We gathered up Pig and stood before the teleclone booth. J.Lo fired it up again.

“Can we all go at once?” I asked. “Will we get mixed up?”

“I am sure we can alls go at once. Pretty sure.”

Nobody moved.

“Might be a lot of Gorg on the other side,” I said.

“Yes,” J.Lo said, and gave Pig a pat.

“I have enjoyed being your brother,” he added.

“It’s been nice having one.”

We walked into the booth—

—and out the other side. I was numb again, and Pig made a low noise. But it was bright enough here, and there were no Gorg in sight. There was nothing in sight but white tile and two rows of urinals. We were in a boys’ bathroom.

“Out of the booth,” said J.Lo. “I should shut it off. Gorg might come.”

As if in agreement, thudding footsteps echoed toward us. Around the corner of this hall of urinals came a Gorg with a rifle like an outboard motor with a car muffler sticking out of it.

“
LU! F’GAB!
GET AWAY FROM THAT!” Gorg bellowed.

We stepped forward and to the sides, crowding the urinals. Pig squirmed and hissed in my arms. J.Lo threw an aspirin, and then another, but the cold foam didn’t slow Gorg down much. He batted chunks of snow away and raised his rifle. Then he noticed Pig for the first time.

“RRRR. THAT IS…” he said, at a loss for words. “SURRENDER THE ANIMAL!”

He pointed his gun at my head.

“SURRENDER THE ANIMAL!”

“Okay,” I said faintly. “Sorry, Pig.”

And I threw her right at his stomach.

Pig screeched and dug her claws into Gorg as a cloud of hair rose off her back. Gorg looked down in horror and loosened one hand from his rifle to knock her away. I threw an aspirin at it, and kicked Gorg in the shin, which stubbed the hell out of my toes, pardon my language. It didn’t do a thing to the shin. But with his hand covered in foam, Gorg couldn’t hurt Pig, and she leaped away and hid behind the teleclone booth.