Too Many Aliens Read online

  I wished I could go talk to Linnsy about this. But I was still upset with her, on account of the business with Jordan. (Not to mention the fact that she was also annoyed with me, and might not be willing to talk to me anyway.}

  I was relieved when Pleskit called on the comm-device to make peace. Only, when he tried to tell me that the situation with Maktel was partly my fault, I got angry and hung up.

  The call upset me so much that I decided to swallow my pride and go talk to Linnsy—even if it did mean a few punchie-wunchies. (And that’s not even counting the fact that I would have to apologize for the way I’d acted the last time I’d gone to see her, even though the thought of her and Jordan together made my stomach feel like it had the day when I’d eaten the finnikle-pokta.)

  CHAPTER 9 [PLESKIT]

  DISTRESS AND MYSTERY

  After my call to Tim went so badly, I was more distressed than ever. I decided it was time to seek advice on the matter.

  The first person I wanted to speak to was the Fatherly One, as that is the appropriate thing to do in such matters. Unfortunately, he was tied up in a conference with the president of Botswana.

  “I’m not sure when he’ll be through,” said Beezle Whompis, who had flickered into sight just to talk to me. “He said it was going to be a difficult conversation.”

  He reached into his desk and took out one of the energy snacks Maktel had given him. “These are quite a treat,” he said, popping it into his mouth. Immediately he was surrounded by an aura of blue light. “Ah!” he said, once the crackling sound had died down. “That was good!”

  “I will tell Maktel you like his gift,” I said.

  What I did not say was how much it pained me that the Fatherly One was once again unavailable. Wakkam Akkim had guided my parental unit and myself through many conversations on this topic. I understood his responsibilities. But understanding did not make the emptiness I felt any less painful.

  I decided to try the Grandfatherly One next. Ever since his death, we have kept his brain in a clear vat filled with an electrolyte solution that keeps him comfortable. As a sign of respect, he has his own room, which is where I went.

  To my surprise, I found not only the Grandfatherly One there but Wakkam Akkim as well. The small, birdlike woman had taken off her cloak, which was fluttering nearby. She was sitting cross-legged in front of the brainvat, chanting in a high-pitched voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

  “No problem,” said the Grandfatherly One through the black speakers mounted on either side of the brainvat. “What do you want, youngling?”

  I bowed my head. “I have a problem I wish to discuss, O Venerated One.”

  Wakkam Akkim stood. “I will leave, if you wish.”

  “Stay, stay,” said the Grandfatherly One. “The sprout could do worse than get advice from one of the wisest beings in the galaxy.”

  “Unwarranted flattery is like a raindrop falling into the ocean,” said the wakkam. “Quickly absorbed, quickly forgotten.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut me some slack, will ya? I’m dead, for Pete’s sake. Let’s just see what Pleskit wants.”

  “Some advice,” I said.

  “Well, I’m glad someone wants my advice,” snorted the Grandfatherly One. “Your Fatherly One might as well have let me go to my final rest for all the times he actually consults me.”

  “And how much time spent you with he, when he was but a sprout?” asked the wakkam softly.

  “If you weren’t such a wise and holy being, I’d throw you out of here,” said the Grandfatherly One, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. “Why don’t you save some of that advice for Pleskit?”

  “What is your problem?” asked the wakkam, turning to me.

  “Tim and Maktel do not seem to like each other. Their first meeting went very badly.”

  “Oy,” said the Grandfatherly One, employing one of his favorite Earthly expressions. “You probably should have skipped me and gone straight to Wakkam Akkim anyway. This kind of thing is her specialty.”

  “I felt I should seek the wisdom of my family first,” I replied.

  “When it comes to this kind of thing, your family is not all that wise,” said the Grandfatherly One. “Take your parental unit. Please. He may be a genius at diplomacy, but he’s a total fushloob at applying what he knows to personal situations.”

  I made the smell of confusion. “That seems silly.”

  “It is silly,” replied the Grandfatherly One. “Many true things are silly.”

  I turned to Wakkam Akkim. “Can you help me in this perplexity?”

  She put her hands together and bowed her head. “Do you feel it is your job to solve it?” she asked.

  I paused to think about this. “No, not my job,” I said at last. “But I would be happier if it were solved.”

  “Why?”

  This seemed pretty obvious, but the wakkamami work in mysterious ways. “If my friends fight, we will not have fun together. I would like Maktel’s visit to be fun.”

  “Fun is good,” agreed the wakkam. “What were they fighting about?”

  “That is hard to say. It didn’t seem to be about anything real to me. Maktel, who is usually polite, said some insulting things. Tim, who is usually easygoing, got quite angry about them.”

  The feathers of the wakkam’s eyebrows waved gracefully. “If the fight was not about what it seemed to be about, it is likely it was about something else.”

  “But what?” I cried, beginning to grow frustrated.

  “Conflicts often arise when two beings want something and each fears the other will be the one to get it.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “What do both boys want?” asked the wakkam. “Answer that, and you’ve got a good start.”

  She trilled a whistle, and the little winged things attached to her cape fluttered over to settle it on her shoulders.

  I turned away and pushed up my nose, a Hevi-Hevian gesture of extreme confusion. I thought I knew what the wakkam was hinting at, yet it was hard for me to believe, much less say aloud. I turned back. “You don’t really mean…” My words trailed off. I felt uncomfortable saying aloud what I thought she meant.

  Wakkam Akkim smiled. “Rare is the faelenga that knows its own price, as the fisherfolk say on Skatwag Six.”

  As she walked past me to leave, the floor shuddered, as if we had been struck by an earthquake. But we were not on land, and the hook that holds us above the ground is designed to absorb such shock.

  “What the heck was that?” cried the Grandfatherly One.

  CHAPTER 10 [LINNSY]

  MORE NEW ARRIVALS

  “Linnsy, telephone!” called my mother. She was in the kitchen. I was in my room.

  “Who is it?” I shouted.

  “Misty!”

  I groaned. Ever since I persuaded Misty to tell the truth about why Pleskit’s Veeblax latched on to her in school, she seems to think we’re best friends. We’re not. All she wants to talk about is who likes who and junk like that, which I think is pretty boring most of the time.

  This call wasn’t boring. “So, girl,” she said as soon as I picked up the phone, “when were you going to get around to telling me you’ve got a thing for Jordan?”

  My first thought when I heard this was: I am going to kill that bigmouthed little worm, Tim. Then I realized that the odds of Tim actually discussing something like this with Misty—who really does think Tim is a worm, at least socially speaking—were pretty low. Trying to be cautious, to not give anything away, I said, “What makes you think I like Jordan?”

  Misty snorted. “Girl, when you drool in school over a guy… I know why.”

  “Skip the poetry. Am I really being that obvious?”

  “You are to me. But not everyone has my fine eye for romance. So, you want me to call Jordan?”

  “Why would I want you to do that?” I yelped.

  “How else are you going to get things moving?” sh
e asked, sounding as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “I don’t want to ‘get things moving,’ ” I said firmly, if not entirely truthfully. “Besides, I thought you were mad at Jordan for breaking up with your sister.” I said this partly because I was confused, partly to buy some time to think.

  “I was. But I had a fight with Cassandra this morning, so I’m even madder at her.”

  Before I could decide whether to have Misty call Jordan, my mother came to my door.

  “Tim is here to see you,” she whispered.

  “Tell him to wait!” I snapped, then felt bad because my mother looked hurt, and none of this was her fault.

  The thing was, it was hard to have a conversation with Misty about Jordan while Tim was in the apartment—partly because I didn’t particularly want him knowing about my emotional life, partly because Jordan is always so rotten to him.

  “Listen, Misty,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And don’t say anything to Jordan!”

  I could almost hear her shrug over the phone. “I won’t if you don’t want me to. But, girl, if you don’t stop drooling, somebody’s gonna say something whether you like it or not!”

  She hung up. I stared at the phone as if it were some slugbeast from another planet. With a sigh I put it down and went to talk to Tim, which—given the way our last conversation had ended—wasn’t something I was exactly looking forward to.

  He was slumped on the couch, looking like a guy who’s about to sing a country-and-western song telling how his dog died, his truck broke, and his wife dumped him for a lawyer. He had something strapped to his chest.

  “Hi,” I said, deciding to ignore the fact that he owed me an apology. I figured getting one out of him in his current condition would probably crush his spirit entirely.

  “Hi.”

  I looked at him more closely. “How come you have the oog-slama strapped to your chest?”

  “Bonding.”

  “Oh. Well, what’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  I sighed. Clearly I was in for a round of boy-style communication. I couldn’t even tell if this visit was about what had happened the last time he’d come up, or if there had been some new catastrophe in Tim World since we’d talked.

  What I could tell was that he wasn’t going to talk to me here in the living room where my mother might hear. But I didn’t feel like inviting him to a conference in my room again. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  He actually smiled for a second. “Sure. Let me get my coat.”

  * * *

  It was snowing when we got outside—the kind of big, fat, fluffy flakes that make you want to catch them on your tongue. But there was no wind, and it wasn’t all that cold, so it was fun weather to be out in.

  We walked in silence until we got to the bridge we cross if we’re heading for school. Standing in the center of it, we had a great view of the embassy hanging from its hook on the big hill in Thorncraft Park.

  As usual, a crowd had gathered on top of the hill. The people stood at the edge of the barrier that keeps them from getting too close, staring up in wonder.

  I thought again how cool it was that we had this thing that people were coming from all over the world to see right here in Syracuse. And how totally, utterly cool it was that I had actually been inside it.

  Then I looked at Tim, who had been inside the embassy more than any other human. “All right,” I said. “What’s up? And this time I want an answer!”

  Tim looked away from me. “I had a fight with Maktel,” he said, twisting his hands in misery.

  “I didn’t know you’d even met him yet.”

  “I went over to the embassy this morning,” he said, still looking away.

  I didn’t say anything, just waited.

  After a long silence Tim turned to face me again. Now his eyes were angry rather than miserable. “He was a real snot, Linnsy. And Pleskit didn’t do anything to help!”

  “What did you want Pleskit to do?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

  Tim’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. Just say something, I guess.”

  “He probably felt stuck in the middle,” I said—not adding that, given the way Tim and Jordan felt about each other, I understood Pleskit’s problem completely.

  “Now I’m afraid they both hate me.”

  I shook my head. “Pleskit’s too civilized for that.”

  “Yeah, everyone’s civilized except me,” he said bitterly. “Maybe I should go to Jordan to take lessons in how to be slick.”

  I flared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I regretted the words immediately, since I knew very well what it was supposed to mean, and I didn’t want Tim to answer the question.

  I didn’t have to worry about changing the subject. Tim grabbed my arm. “Look!” he cried, pointing to the embassy.

  We stared in awe.

  Plunging down from the sky was a beautiful silver-and-scarlet spaceship. It was heading straight for the embassy.

  The crowd began to scream, racing back in panic. The ship looked for certain like it was going to crash. Then, at the last possible moment, it slowed to a near stop and moved gracefully into a position directly under the embassy.

  Once it was centered, it floated up. When it hit the embassy, you could hear the click all the way from where we stood. Even more startling, the embassy, which is almost two hundred feet across the center, wiggled when it happened.

  “Come on!” said Tim. “Let’s go!”

  He raced across the bridge and toward the embassy.

  I took off after him.

  At the end of the bridge we both came to a screeching halt.

  CHAPTER 11 [TIM]

  STRANGE WARNING

  At the end of the bridge stood a tall man, one I hadn’t noticed when we’d first stepped onto it. He held out his hands to stop us.

  “Hold on,” he said firmly. “Take it easy!”

  “Did you see what just happened?” I cried. “I want to go take a look!”

  The man shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

  “Why not?” asked Linnsy. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you, a Fed or something?”

  The man shook his head, and his face shifted, changing from human to one covered with fur. “Not exactly,” he said.

  Linnsy and I began to back away.

  “I just came to offer a word to the wise,” he said. “If you’re smart, you’ll watch out for Ellico vec Bur!”

  Then he shimmered, and vanished.

  I blinked. “Must have been a holograph.”

  “I don’t care what it was!” said Linnsy. “Why the heck was he bothering us? And who’s Ellico vec Bur?”

  I glanced around, half expecting some other alien to shimmer into view. “He—they—are friends of Meenom’s. Business partners, I guess. Come on, let’s go down to the embassy. We should tell Pleskit about this.”

  But when we got to the park, the guard in the blue dome I usually go through to get into the embassy wouldn’t let us pass.

  “Sorry, Tim,” he said. “I know you’re approved and everything. But you’re not on the list for another visit today. And I can’t get any answer from inside. I hope there’s not a problem.”

  My guts were churning, from excitement, from fear, and now from upset at being shut out of the embassy. There was no reason to think it was Maktel’s fault, but somehow I felt that if he hadn’t been here, I would have been able to get in.

  “Come on,” I said to Linnsy. “Let’s get back to the apartment. We’ll see if we can contact Pleskit on my comm-device.”

  * * *

  To my relief, it took only one buzz before Pleskit’s face appeared in the round viewscreen. “Greetings, Tim,” he said. He looked a little shaken.

  “Greetings, Pleskit, and what the heck is going on over there?”

  “Ah, you saw the arrival?”

  “We sure did.
”

  “We?” asked Pleskit. He bent his head so he could look past me. “Oh, hello, Linnsy.”

  She waved. “ ’Lo, Pleskit.”

  “The ship that arrived belongs to Ellico vec Bur. It turns out it was being repaired, and the Trader(s) had asked to have it delivered here when it was done.”

  “Well, they nearly scared the crowd outside the embassy into a mass heart attack,” I said.

  “Things inside the embassy were a little distressing as well,” said Pleskit. “The Fatherly One was not properly notified, and he is less than amused. That’s one reason I am in my room right now. Given his mood, I do not want to do anything to attract his attention. Maktel is here too.”

  “Hello, Maktel,” I said, not entirely graciously.

  “Greetings,” replied a voice, coming from somewhere beyond Pleskit’s face. He did not sound very gracious either.

  “Listen,” I said, “something else really weird just happened.”

  “I am not sure I am ready for more weirdness,” said Pleskit. “I am on overload already.”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” I said, reaching out to turn off the comm-device’s smell transmitter. “But you’d better hear about this.”

  Then Linnsy and I described our encounter at the edge of the bridge.

  “You’re right,” he said when I was done. “That is most disturbing. You are probably also correct that it was a holographic projection, which at least means there was not an unauthorized off-worlder here on the planet. But what was the purpose of their warning?”

  “Obviously it was to confirm that Ellico vec Bur is not to be trusted,” said Maktel, who had come to stand beside Pleskit.

  “I’d agree,” I said. “Except for one thing. The guy looked like he was the same species as Mikta-makta-mookta.”

  Pleskit gasped. Mikta-makta-mookta was our worst enemy. She had been with the embassy staff when they’d first arrived, but had turned out to be a traitor, one who had tried to suck every memory out of our brains.

  “That complicates things greatly,” said Maktel. “Just because the messenger was of the same species does not mean he cannot be trusted. On the other hand, it makes the message very suspect. So the question now is, can we trust the warning—or was it meant to cause some sort of mischief?”