Zombies of the Science Fair Read online

  2. His pet Veeblax. The Veeblax is this utterly cool little shapeshifter that can turn itself into all kinds of stuff—sort of like a three-dimensional chameleon. It’s taken me a while to get to know the Veeblax, but I think it’s starting to like me.

  * * *

  When I came in, Pleskit and the Veeblax were bouncing on the bed. Pleskit farted a greeting, something he has learned not to do in school, because it annoys the teachers and causes certain snotty kids (namely Jordan Lynch) to pick on him. Besides, his Fatherly One wants everyone in the embassy to speak only Earthling languages while they are on this mission. But in private, Pleskit is teaching me a little Hevi-Hevian. (Unfortunately, my sense of smell is not strong enough to let me really communicate in their language.)

  I scrambled onto the bed and bounced with them for a while—being careful not to bounce off the edge, which is easy enough to do, since you can’t see it.

  “So, are you ready to make a trade?” he asked, doing a bottom bounce that led to a perfect flip.

  “What kind of a trade?” I asked, instantly alert and cautious. Pleskit’s people are totally into trading; any deal you make they take very seriously.

  “About our science projects.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Pleskit smiled. “I help you with your science project, just as you wanted.”

  “Yeah?” I said, bouncing up to touch the ceiling. “And in return?”

  “You help me with mine.”

  I bounced off the bed. “How can I help you? You’ve got all kinds of alien superscience at your command. What do you need me for?”

  Pleskit bounced down to join me. “Well, it’s not so much that I want you to help me with the project,” he said. “Actually, I want you to be my science project.”

  “What are you going to do?” I yelped. “Dissect me?”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Tim,” said Pleskit, putting out his arm so the Veeblax—which had temporarily shaped itself into something like a snake—could slither up it. “I don’t want to dissect you. I want to make you smarter.”

  Torn between excitement and terror, I grabbed the sides of my head and stared at Pleskit. “Can you do that?” I cried.

  He smiled. “I’m not sure. But it seemed worth a try.”

  CHAPTER 5 [PLESKIT]

  BEEZLE WHOMPIS

  Though Tim looked fearful, I could see a kind of hunger in his eyes. “Don’t you think that making you smarter would be a worthy science fair project?” I asked.

  “Just how do you plan to do this?” asked Tim, ignoring my question.

  “I won’t know that till I examine your brain. Also, to be really scientific, we’ll have to give you a pre-test and a post-test, so we can tell if the project has worked or not.”

  The Veeblax slithered off my arm and positioned itself in front of Tim. Then it shaped itself like a giant eyeball and stared up at him. This is a trick it has been doing a lot lately—mostly, I think, because it seems to annoy Ms. Buttsman.

  “Look,” said Tim, “I’m not going to have surgery, and I’m not going to swallow anything.” This didn’t surprise me. Between the finnikle-pokta that gave him a major barfing episode and the monkeyfood we invented a while ago, Tim remains very nervous about non-Earthling food substances.

  I sighed. “That does limit my options.” When I saw the look on his face, I began to laugh. “Don’t worry, Tim! I wasn’t really going to feed you anything!”

  “All right, then just exactly how are you intending to make me smarter?”

  “I told you, I don’t know yet. I have to do some research first.”

  “Hey, we don’t have much time, Pleskit. The science fair is Thursday. Besides, I don’t think the library is even open tonight.”

  “We have no need to leave the embassy. I’ll just tap into the main computer. Our database contains the unabridged Encyclopedia Galactica—all thirty-five thousand two hundred and forty-three volumes.”

  “A thirty-five-thousand-volume encyclopedia?” Tim yelped. “I don’t think we have that many books in our entire school library!”

  “The fact that your government does not properly support education is not the issue. The point is, we have all the research material we need right here. In addition to the encyclopedia, the computer contains several million volumes of science, history, poetry, literature, mathematics, and joke books.”

  “Joke books?” asked Tim. He sounded surprised, and a little suspicious.

  “According to the Fatherly One, humor is one of the most important aspects of a civilization. He claims you can never truly understand a culture without understanding its jokes.”

  Tim smiled. “So how are you doing with Earthling jokes?”

  “Not very well, I fear. So far the only way I’ve found that I can get a laugh for certain is with a fart.”

  “Sure. Farts are always funny.”

  “That is hard for me to understand. On Hevi-Hevi we use farts in some of our most serious poetry.”

  Tim snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head. “True poets know that a well-tuned fart can be used to express deep tragedy.”

  “I may use that line on my mother sometime,” said Tim. “But let’s get back to the science fair. Do you think you can enhance my brain in time so that I can come up with a killer project of my own?”

  “I do not want your project to cause any fatalities!” I cried, alarmed at the idea.

  Tim rolled his eyes. “It’s just an expression, Pleskit. It means… oh, a project that will knock their eyes out.”

  “Well, we’ve gone from death to blindness,” I said. “I suppose that’s a step up.”

  Tim sighed. “You know what I mean!”

  I had to admit that he was right. But I also pointed out how extraordinarily violent his language was.

  “But everyone talks like that,” said Tim.

  “And you’re surprised that other planets are nervous about opening relations with you?” I asked. I was about to say more but stopped, realizing that I was on the verge of getting in a fight with my best friend. (Not to mention that I was talking about his world in a way that is not approved.) “Come on,” I said, eager to change the subject. “Let’s get started. I think Beezle Whompis can help us with the initial testing.”

  * * *

  The office of Beezle Whompis is located just outside the office of the Fatherly One. We didn’t see Beezle Whompis when we first entered his room. But the air was crackling with a sense of energy, which is usually a good sign that Beezle Whompis is somewhere nearby. Indeed, seconds after we entered the room, we heard a sizzling sound, and he appeared in his chair.

  When in physical form, Beezle Whompis is tall and extremely lean. His eyes are enormous—very dark and deep-set. His parchment-yellow skin stretches tightly over his high cheekbones. Three round nostrils in the center of his face are all he has of a nose.

  Even though I had been pretty sure he was nearby, I made a startled noise and released the odor of alarm from my sphen-gnut-ksher. The way Tim squeaked let me know that I wasn’t the only one who had been surprised. (Or, possibly, that he was bothered by the odor.)

  “Sorry, boys,” said Beezle Whompis. “Holding on to this shape is a bit of a job, and I like to take a rest in my natural form every now and then. How can I help you?”

  “We want to test Tim’s intelligence,” I said.

  Beezle Whompis laughed, a harsh, crackling sound that Tim says always makes him think of radio static. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

  We explained the situation.

  “Ah, well, that should be amusing,” he said, nodding solemnly.

  “Amusing?” asked Tim. He sounded offended.

  “Being easily amused is a great gift,” said Beezle Whompis. “It makes life vastly more pleasant. Come on, I’ll take you to the lab, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  I had been nervous about Beezle Whompis before he arrived, since whoever holds the job
of assistant to the Fatherly One can have a great impact on my life. But he was turning out to be one of the best assistants in a long time—partly because he actually seemed to enjoy helping Tim and me with our ideas.

  “Follow me,” he said, disappearing from where he stood beside his desk and rematerializing at the door.

  I had been expecting Beezle Whompis to take us to the embassy lab. He did lead us up to that floor, but instead of the lab we went into another room, one that was mostly white, with a table in the middle. Above the table hung a wide lamp.

  “Oh, no!” said Tim, when he saw the table. “I’m not getting up on that thing!”

  “No one asked you to,” said Beezle Whompis patiently. “Have a seat, please.”

  Several chairs stood against one of the side walls. Tim and I sat down. Beezle Whompis opened a cupboard and took out a purple box covered with knobs, dials, buttons, gauges, speakers, and antennae. He carried it over to where we sat. Before either of us could say a word, he plunked it down on Tim’s head. Though the bottom of the box had appeared solid, his head disappeared inside the thing as it settled all the way to his shoulders.

  CHAPTER 6 [TIM]

  TESTING, TESTING…

  When Beezle Whompis stuck that testing box onto my head I felt a moment of total terror. It was pitch-black inside—so dark I felt as if I had fallen into a coal mine. Even worse, the moment the box was in position, my head started to tingle. The tingling didn’t really hurt; it was sort of a cross between the pins-and-needles feeling you get when you’ve sat on your foot too long and the way a barber’s clippers feel against your neck. But it was very startling.

  “Take it off!” I shouted. But the words sounded muffled, even to me, and I had no idea whether Beezle Whompis and Pleskit could hear me or not.

  Beezle Whompis said, “Count to ten, Tim.” His voice was perfectly clear.

  I did as he told me, thinking that when I got to ten, he would take the box off me. He didn’t. Instead, he gave me a new order: “Imagine the color blue.”

  By now I was feeling so cranky that I wanted to refuse. But somehow as soon as he told me to do it, my mind called up blue anyway.

  Next he told me to state my name and address. Then he had me make a fist. Finally he asked me to imagine what it would be like to have wings. I was just getting into a cool flying fantasy when he took the box off my head.

  “What was that all about?” I demanded as soon as my head was in the open.

  “What was what all about?” asked Beezle Whompis calmly.

  “All those weird questions.”

  “I was trying to stimulate different areas of your brain so I could get a more accurate reading of your mental activity.”

  That sounded so interesting I forgot about being angry. “What did you find out?”

  “Not much. The activity was too low to register on the dials. Just kidding, just kidding!” he added quickly when he saw the look on my face. “We certainly got enough information to give Pleskit a baseline for his experiment.”

  “So what’s my score?” I asked, both excited and nervous at finding out how intelligent I was.

  Beezle Whompis barked out his staticky crackle of a laugh. “The idea of applying a single score to intelligence is very primitive, Tim. The brain has many functions, many skills. That was why I had you thinking and doing all those different things while the test box was on your head—so I could measure the activity of different areas of your brain. To try to express your brain’s capacity in all those different areas with a single number is just plain silly.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling a little disappointed. “Well, can you give me a general sense of how I did?”

  “On the GISMAT comparative scale of intelligent beings you rank somewhere around a two.”

  “Two?” I shrieked. “That makes me stupider than broccoli!”

  Beezle Whompis made his radio-on-the-wrong-channel chuckle. “That depends on the scale you’re using. This particular scale goes from one to ten thousand. However, over two dozen advanced civilizations have been developed by beings still at the one level.

  “Now, here’s another bit of information, one I found quite fascinating. Among the things I tested is something that might be called ‘untapped potential.’ As it turns out, you are only using a fraction of your brain. This is in line with other research that has been done regarding your species. This issue of untapped potential is one of the things that has made Earth so fascinating to starfarers for some centuries now. How is it that you beings can have so much brainpower, and yet use so little of it? A most intriguing question.”

  Pleskit, who was sitting at a screen examining the data, spoke up. “This is causing me to rethink my project, Beezle Whompis. What if rather than trying to increase Tim’s intelligence I simply try to improve his ability to use the brainpower he already has?”

  Beezle Whompis flickered around the edges, as if he were about to let go of his physical shape. I decided this must mean he was thinking extra hard. “Interesting idea,” he said at last. “The task might be more manageable, yet the final result should be about the same. Why don’t you study these readouts and see what you can come up with?”

  With that he sizzled out of sight. At first I couldn’t tell if he had left the room or just returned to his energy state. But after a minute I could sense a difference in the air that let me know he had gone.

  I turned to Pleskit. “So,” I said, still feeling a little nervous, “what do you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure. Give me a little while to do some research.”

  He was sitting at a console, pressing buttons and making smells. At first I thought I might read over his shoulder. Then I realized (not surprisingly) that the Encyclopedia Galactica was written in alien, so I decided to play with the Veeblax instead. The little guy seemed to be getting used to me, and it was fun to make a face and watch it try to imitate me. I tried doing the Frankenstein walk and was amused when the Veeblax did an almost perfect copy of it.

  My laughter must have disturbed Pleskit, because he growled, “Will you two stop fooling around?”

  “Yes, Master,” I said obediently. But Pleskit was already back in his research, so the sarcasm was wasted.

  The Veeblax and I played quietly for a while longer. Then, just when I was in danger of falling asleep on the floor, Pleskit shouted, “By the Seven Moons of Skatwag, I think I’ve got it! Come on, Tim. Let’s go to the supply room.”

  Startled, I jumped to my feet. Pleskit was holding a list in his hand. With the Veeblax yeeping and yipping behind us, we hurried down the hall to a room filled with a huge assortment of interesting-looking equipment. Pleskit handed me a box—not a cardboard box, of course, this was made of some purple material and was so light the whole box didn’t weigh any more than a cracker.

  While I held the box, my purple pal began tossing things into it. The stuff all looked vaguely scientific, though none of it looked much like anything I had ever seen on Earth. He kept checking his list and muttering. Finally, when the box was nearly full, he cried, “That’s it. On to the lab!”

  This time the Veeblax wrapped itself around his leg. Lugging the box—fairly heavy, now that it was full—I followed him. In the lab he dumped the parts onto a long table and began humming to himself as he worked. Occasionally he would add a fart to his song, though whether that was for rhythm or for emotional emphasis I couldn’t tell.

  I started to get worried. “Pleskit, I’m going to have to go home soon.”

  “That’s all right,” he muttered. “I’m almost finished.”

  I wasn’t sure he had actually heard me. But not more than ten minutes later he stood back from the bench and cried, “Behold the key to unlocking the potential of Earthly brains!”

  “That thing’s going to make me a genius?” I asked in dismay.

  CHAPTER 7 [PLESKIT]

  THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

  After working so hard on a way to enhance Tim’s mental abilities, I was somewha
t offended by his reaction to my device, which I had already begun to think of as the “Pleskonian Suggestibility Stimulator.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

  “It looks like a ray gun!”

  “Well, it is a ray gun! It’s going to send a ‘Suggestibility Ray’ into your skull. Then, when you are more open to suggestion, I will urge you to use your brain more effectively—thereby releasing your true natural potential. Krepotzim! You’re smarter. That was the whole point of this, remember?”

  “I dunno,” said Tim. “It reminds me of the thing Captain Lance Driscoll used on Tarbox Moon Warriors to immobilize evil alien beings.”

  “Tim, when will you accept the fact that Tarbox Moon Warriors was just a show? This is reality. Now, shall we go forward with this experiment or not?”

  “Shouldn’t we test it on something else first? Like, maybe the Veeblax?”

  “As far as we know, the Veeblax is already using its brain at full capacity.”

  Tim sighed. “All right. Give me your best shot.”

  “I’m not going to shoot you, I’m going to zap you. It’s an entirely different thing.”

  I turned on the ray gun. It made a high-pitched whine as it warmed up. The sound was incredibly annoying. Fortunately, it stopped once the beam was ready. I flipped the switch. Instantly a purple ray surrounded Tim’s head. I counted to thirty, then turned off the ray.

  Tim sat there, just staring at me. He looked a little gib-stikkle. “Is that all?” he asked at last.

  “How do you feel?” I replied.

  He paused, then said, “How do you want me to feel?”

  I blinked. This was not a Tim-like response. On a hunch, I said, “I think you should feel terrific.”

  “Then I do!” cried Tim, leaping to his feet. “I haven’t felt this good in years. It’s like I’ve got raw health pulsing through my veins!”

  Clearly, the Suggestibility Ray had worked!

  “I bet you feel smarter, too, don’t you?” I asked.