“So...” I said. “Were you thrown away too, then?”
Funsize stopped. “Yes. Thrown away like garbage. A criminal, tossed onto the scrap heap like a heap of scrap. Discarded by society.”
There was a stiff little silence here, so I complimented his hat.
“Thank you. It keeps my head in.”
“I really like your house, too,” I said. “But I have to get out of here. I have a friend in trouble, and...” I sighed. “I think I’m going to try to save him.”
Funsize fiddled with gadgets. “Another...hu-man like you?”
“No—a Boov, actually. One that I met when you guys were on my planet.”
“Ahyes. And this planet...” he said. “It was the last planet? The one before we came to here?”
“Yeah. Earth. You didn’t see it at all? Not even on your TV?”
“The television was not yet working. But...no offense, please, but there was no reason to look at this Earth. We Boov, we always went to a new planet, and got chased away by Gorg, and found another new planet again. Why get used to the view? No, we Boov always moved on.”
“Until now, you mean.”
“Yes, until now.” He got kind of starey. He was careless with the gadget he was holding, and it dropped off a table onto the floor. “Now it seems we will stay.” He looked at me. “I had a friend once, you know.”
“Uh, yeah? What, uh, what happened to—”
“It was her job also to collect the garbage. We did this together. We emptied the waste bins and took all the trash to the lowest part of the ship, where it would be mashed up and used for telecloning.”
“Right,” I said. “Wait—for what?”
I’d thought I understood how telecloning worked. You had one thing on one side, and the telecloner made more of it on the other side. But you only have to type that out once to realize you don’t really understand it at all. Regardless, I’d eaten telecloned milk shakes and water for months after the invasion.
“The garbage slop is processed and made ready for teleportation to any telecloner,” Funsize explained. “Then the computers rearrange it into what is needed: fuel, or food, or—”
“AAAAAgross,” I said, circling the room with my hands over my ears. “Gross gross gross gross gross gross—”
Funsize covered his ears and fell into circling behind me. “Grossgrossgross! Grossgross!” he repeated, happily, until we sort of petered out at the same time.
“Ahh,” he said to me. “You know, that is the sort of thing we could be doing every day if you stay down here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t. I have to help my friend. What happened to yours?”
Funsize looked out a window of his pagoda. “Her punishment ended, and she was permitted to have a better job. So. I went on collecting the trash alone, until one day they built the garbage tubes, and then the trash collected itself. Still Funsize was needed to shovel the slop. But later still the Boov come here, to this new world, and now they no longer even care about reusing the slop. Now they have a whole moonful of resources to teleclone with. Now they can hollow this world out and fill it up with their slop. And all because of him.”
Funsize scowled at the TV. He’d turned the sound off, but they were playing the same footage of J.Lo getting dragged off to prison again.
“This time it was he who told the Gorg where we were. This Jail-oh. He who led the Gorg to these hu-mans. Did you know a hu-man named Don Laundry found a way to defeat the Gorg? Now they will never come back, maybies. Without Gorg to take our planet, we will get to use our own planet. Now no one needs Funsize anymore.”
Man, I can think of at least a couple people off the top of my head who you oughta be mad at before J.Lo is what I might have said if I hadn’t minded Funsize guessing that J.Lo was that friend I’d been talking about.
“Hollow out the world?” I asked. I didn’t understand this whole operation.
“Yes,” said Funsize, brightening a little. Civic pride, despite everything. “The garbage is sent down garbage tubes to the chompers, where it is chomped into slop. Yes? Some of the slop is burned to power the diggers—do you hear that humming? Then the diggers dig out the world and send the dirt rubble up tubes to the surface to form hills that can be covered with fancy houses. Whatever slop is not burned fills the hollowness and prevents the planet from getting crumplepits.”
“Crumplepits,” I said.
“Crumplepits,” he agreed.
“Oh.”
He smiled—just a little fake smile, like a model for a bigger smile that hadn’t been built yet. “Is very efficient, yes? The way they replace Funsize and make his life meaningless.”
“Hey...” I said, wanting to say something. “That Dan Landry...he’s a joke. I...I bet the Gorg will come back and invade you guys again real soon.”
“Do you think it?”
“Sure. And you know...I bet the other Boov just forgot you were down here. They were probably busy with moving, and ruining all our stuff on Earth, and everything. If you help me get aboveground, and out of the palace...I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with Captain Smek.”
Funsize gasped. “You know Captain Smek?”
“Sure.”
“Are you friends?”
“Why, just an hour ago he was saying what a tragedy it would be if I had a horrible accident and died!”
“Wow! And you think he would have pity on old Funsize?”
“Why not?” I said. I got up to leave, though I didn’t really know yet where I was leaving to. “You’re a good guy, right? I don’t know what you did to get...you know, sent down here in the first place, but any Boov would be impressed with all this stuff you’ve made. Right?”
“Right!” Funsize answered.
“And this house you’ve built? Uhmazing.”
“Thank you!”
“I like it ’cause it looks like these houses they have on Earth, in Asia. Pagodas.”
“Pa-GOH-das!” said Funsize.
“That’s right.”
“And these pagodas on Earthinasia...” he said.
“Uh-huh—”
“They are also secretly death rays for shooting up fiery vengeance at those smug surface Boov who have forgotten you?”
Garbage rustled in the distance. I coughed.
“You know,” I said, “I’m going to have to look that up.”
“Fine, fine. Okaythen, follow me—I will show you how to get upstairs.”
EIGHT
“Fall...upward,” I repeated.
“Yes.” Funsize and I were standing directly underneath those chomping jaws he’d jammed open. He had what looked like a little footstool in his hands. “You will use the hoverbutt and fall upward through the garbage pipes and take just the right forks and spoons to get to the part of the spaceship building that used to be the escape pods.”
“Hoverbutt,” I repeated.
“Stop repeating me. Here, take it. It is made for Boov, but should work.”
I took the hoverbutt. It growled like an empty stomach. “Okay, so what do I—?”
“Put it under your butt. Yes, like...no, not your poomp, your butt.”
“This is my bu—”
“Put it under your butt!”
“Okay! Jeez.” I shifted the seat a little, hopefully in the right direction. Then I sort of sat on the thing, and it growled harder and held me in place a few feet above the garbage pile. The lighter trash rippled away from my cold exhaust.
I curled up and held my knees, trying to keep balanced. “Okay, and to go up? Whoa.” I was already drifting upward slowly like an old balloon.
“Here now!” said Funsize. “Take the map I have made you!”
The map looked like something I’d find on a restaurant place mat I was too old for. Funsize had even drawn a crude picture of me at the start and a rocketpod at the finish.
“When you are there, press on the yellow button!” he called as I neared the chomper. “The hoverbutt will then re
turn to me!”
“Thank you, Funsize!” I answered as I steadied myself against the chomper’s trembling jaws. “Try not to activate your death ray before I talk to some people!”
“Okay! I cannot promise anything!”
But now I was through the jaws and looked up at the ceiling above me—full of holes, each hole the mouth of a garbage tube leading to a different part of the ship. I squinted at the map and counted off the holes. There wasn’t a ton of light, and in the tubes there was going to be even less, but here I noticed for the first time that my dog collar was faintly luminous, like a glow stick. It would have been nice to think that the Boov had designed it that way to be helpful, but I knew it was really so they could keep track of me in the dark. I was going to have to get this collar off as soon as possible.
I was pretty sure I knew which hole to take. Like, 70 percent sure. By now I’d realized that the hoverbutt responded to tiny little changes in posture, so I tried to lean just slightly in the right direction.
It took me a couple of tries and a smack in the forehead, but eventually I was on my way.
Then I reached a fork and didn’t realize I was holding the map wrong. When I came almost immediately to the top of the tube, I peeked out through the lid. Light stung my eyes—I was looking out a garbage can in a cafeteria crowded with Boov. They sat at a single winding table, or walked around holding trays laden with weird food. I ducked down quickly, the lid clanking above me, and heard voices approach. I dove as fast as I could as the lid reopened and the tube was once again filled with light.
“Going to watch the presidential debate later?” asked a Boov as leftovers rained down on my head.
“Of course,” said another that I could barely hear. “Is it not mandatory?”
“I am only making conversation.”
“Your conversation is poorly made.”
I sighed and dropped farther, picking pieces of koobish and who knows what else out of my hair. And I don’t know how I could have possibly dropped down into the wrong tube, but when the time came, I couldn’t find the same fork again. So I retraced my path, or tried to, and ended up at the top of an entirely different tube, which opened into some kind of atrium. Curved, sweeping walls looking pearly beneath a bank of sunlamps. A walkway twisting beneath a slowly turning mobile of huge, bulbous terrariums, each one packed with soil, and swollen palm trees, and furry flowers, and ferns like bouquets of spindly pink fingers.
I checked the map, and I definitely wasn’t supposed to be going through an atrium. I was about to dive again when I heard a kid’s voice.
I’d gotten so used to the translator that for a moment I couldn’t understand why this voice sounded different. Then the speaker passed my trash can—a boy. A human boy about my age, in the middle of a conversation with a human man. His voice had sounded weird through my translator because it hadn’t been translated at all.
“What do you mean you’re not going to?” the boy was saying. “They brought you all the way here to say nice things about Captain Smek on TV. Why can’t you just do that?”
“Because I have a secret plan,” said Dan Landry. Then he started, and looked around. “What was that clanking?”
The boy said, “I think it came from the garbage can.”
“Maybe they have rats!” said Landry. “Space rats.”
“I guess.”
Landry leaned over the boy. “Don’t you want to hear the secret plan?”
The boy was looking past Landry at an approaching terrarium. “That’s all right.”
Landry noticed the terrarium too, and had to hunch as it passed over his head, slow as a cloud. This room wasn’t designed for anyone over five feet. Meanwhile, he eyed the boy and seemed at a loss. “Are you...sure you don’t want to hear my secret plan?”
“I’m sure.”
After a moment, Landry just said it anyway: “I’m running for president! Of New Boovworld! My plan is to announce it right in the middle of the debate tonight. What a stunt, right?”
The boy was just shaking his head. “That...that’s never going to work. They won’t vote for you.”
“Emerson, Emerson. Have a little faith in your old man. What’s Smek got that I haven’t got?”
Emerson gave this some thought. “Legs,” he guessed. “Like six extra legs.”
“Not a literal question. But don’t you see what’ll happen if I join the race? Smek and Sandhandler will split the Boov vote, and I’ll be there to mop up the rest.”
Emerson frowned. “But it’s...all Boov vote, isn’t it? There won’t be anyone voting who isn’t a Boov.”
“Just a bump in the road for an experienced statesman like me,” said Landry. “Smek is in a very weak position—he says he isn’t, but I overheard some Boov talking about it on Level Four while I was using the men’s room. Or while I was using something that I think was a men’s room, anyway.” Landry looked over his shoulder. “Actually, I don’t think that was a men’s room.”
“But—”
“Look, the leaders here aren’t used to having to run for office; Smek and Sandhandler won’t know what hit ’em. You know the Boov don’t even have a word for politician? I used it in conversation earlier, and this mole thing mistranslated it as ‘poomp.’ That’s like a part of the body or something.”
“Mm.”
“Hello, are you listening? These are pearls of wisdom; you’re lucky to be here.”
Emerson jerked his head up at this. “Yeah—speaking of, why am I here? The Internet says Take Your Kid to Work Day was way back in April.”
“Sure, but your mom has you during the school year.”
Emerson folded his arms. “I think you just don’t want to pay for a babysitter.”
I sank back down the tube again in kind of a daze. So Landry was on New Boovworld, and about to make an idiot of himself again. But the Boov did think he was a hero or something—maybe he could help me and J.Lo.
I found a new fork and took a tube I was certain would take me to the rocketpods, but nope—atrium again. This time another garbage can on the opposite side. Dan Landry and Emerson had been joined by two Boov, one in white, one in green.
“Are you certain?” the Boov in white asked them. “We could send to your room a fruits basket. Or they are serving koobish in the cafeteria.”
“Um, no thanks,” said Emerson. “I don’t eat meat.”
“Koobish are not made of meat,” explained the Boov. “Koobish are made of koobish.”
“We cherish your hospitality!” Landry said with a grin. He tilted awkwardly to one side as a bottle of chrysanthemums passed. “But I think we’ll both rest before the debate. Come on, Emerson.”
The Boov watched Landry and Emerson leave. The one in white waited until they were out of sight before he spoke.
“I don’t trust him. You would not believe what he just did in the Level Four vending machine.”
“I keep wanting to tackle them,” said the Boov in green. “You are certain neither is that humansgirl that was helping the Squealer?”
“Positive. These two are males.”
“I can never tell.”
“Regardless, the humansgirl is dead,” the Boov in white told him. “Tried to escape down a garbage tube.”
The Boov in green whistled. Or something. A whistle definitely came out of somewhere. “Poor dumb thing,” he said. “Chomped into slop.”
“Don’t let it bother you. The humans do not feel pain like we do.”
I’d had enough of that, so I descended again.
Look, I’m not going to bore you with the details. I may possibly have gotten lost a few more times. Ten or twenty more times. Finally I peeked up though a trash lid and it looked like I was there: a long room curved away from me, filled with shiny chrome fixtures and two dozen gleaming white lanes, like somebody had started out making a bathroom and accidentally built a bowling alley instead. At the top of each lane was a rocketpod; at the bottom of each was a big cat flap—a U-shaped door sealed w
ith clear rubber. A giant TV hung from the ceiling over the lanes, its screen blank.
There wasn’t anybody in here. I guess you sometimes need to launch out of a spaceship, but hardly anybody ever launches out of an office building. I was kind of a special case.
I crawled out of the garbage can, dragging the hoverbutt behind me, and approached the closest rocketpod—the rocketpod and the little console that was standing just to the right of it.
I think I mentioned that a while back J.Lo made me these Boovish flash cards. And maybe I hadn’t been studying them as often as I’d promised, but I pressed the biggest button feeling pretty confident that I recognized the word “on” and—
SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, the pod rocketed down the lane, through the cat flap, and out over the city.
I’m not going to write down the next thing I said, but the thing after that was “Pardon my language.”
I stumbled quickly over to the second rocketpod and the second console and, seeing the mistake I’d made the first time, I pressed just a medium-sized button and—
SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, the pod rocketed down the lane, through the cat flap, and out over the city.
“Wh...why would they have two buttons that do the same—” I muttered before the screen overlooking the pod bay flashed on and some Boov interrupted.
“Hello?” the Boov said, from the screen. He squinted. “Is that the human Dan Landry?”
“Yep!” I said, hustling over to the third rocketpod.
“Looks like you are doing some evacuating!” said the Boov. “What a colorful human thing to do! Please stop, though.”
“In a sec,” I told him. I pressed a button and the third rocketpod went FUSHHH and fell apart.
“Maybe if you told me what you are trying to do,” said the Boov.
The next pod just hummed and shuddered and made a beeping sound. I tried pressing some more buttons, but the console kept going BLONG, so I ditched it and moved on.
“Because so far,” said the Boov, “you have sent empty escape pods to the roof of the Fork Museum and to the Captain Smek Memorial Balloonafish Pond in Nacho Park. I’m sending a small group of large Boov to...help you. So if you could just stop—”