The rocketpod that had been shuddering and beeping now started beeping faster, and then SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, the pod rocketed down the lane, through the cat flap, and out over the city.
“Aaaand now you have shot a rocketpod into the broadcasting antenna near my house. So I guess I won’t be watching the debate later! Super.”
“Oh,” I said to myself, squinting at the new console. “That beeping...was a time delay. That’s what I need—which button was that again?”
“Now this is strange,” said the Boov on the screen. “Computer tells me that Dan Landry and his humanschild are resting in their quarters. You are someone else—aaAH!” he gasped. “You are the Squealer’s human!”
I must have pressed something right, because the nearest pod started beeping like the last one. I ran around the side and threw open the hatch and climbed in as it shivered and purred. Just then I realized I was still holding the hoverbutt.
“Sorry, Funsize,” I whispered. He wasn’t getting it back now.
A door on the other end of the pod bay opened and a bunch of olive-green Boov rushed in just as I got the pod’s hatch closed and latched and the cabin pressurized and my ears popped and I tried to strap myself in with a seat belt that was meant for an entirely different shape of person. I’d gotten it snapped more or less over my torso when a T-shaped stick popped up from the floor in front of me.
“Human!” shouted one of the green Boov as he pounded on the plastic windshield. “Exit the rocketpod!” The others heaved at the hatch, but no dice.
“You can cancel the launch sequence!” said the Boov on the screen. “Just hit command-space-three. Hurry!”
One of the green Boov raced over to the console. “Command-space-three?” he said. “In that order?”
“No, all at once!”
The beeping accelerated.
“I do not see a button that says ‘command.’”
“Oh! Ha—sorry! I am thinking of my SmekBook at home. Not command. Control!”
“Never mind,” said the Boov, scowling at me through the windshield as he drew his gun. “I will—”
SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, my pod rocketed down the lane, through the cat flap, and out over the city.
NINE
I rocketed out into the night sky, the blurry shapes of smaller buildings pitching beneath me, and immediately the inside of my ship started flashing purple and making this ENGH ENGH sound, like that’s ever helpful. If you’re at the point where an escape pod even seems like a good idea in the first place, then I don’t think you need a siren to tell you how your life is going.
Other Boovish ships like silver fish darted past the windshield, this way and that. I remembered that the jail where they were keeping J.Lo was in Sector 3, so I yelled that.
“Sector Three jail!” I told the rocketpod. “Sector Three!” It was about as useful as shouting “Bagel!” at a toaster. But just then I was about to crash into a tower, so I grabbed the T-stick in front of me and yanked it to the right. I slalomed around the edge of the tower, grinding sparks, and jerked the stick to the left to avoid another. A school of little ships scattered at my approach. Finally there was a big bubble building that looked too big to avoid. It was coming up fast, so I pulled back on the stick, hard. So hard it snapped off at the base. The seat belt squeezed the air right out of me as the rocketpod slowed, getting closer to the bubble building, closer still, until—bump—my windshield bounced off a window belonging to a very startled-looking Boov on a treadmill.
The rocketpod hovered in midair, humming. I sort of waved at the Boov. The Boov gave a little wave back.
I tried to push and pull at what was left of the T-stick, but nothing worked. So instead I unfastened my belt and opened up the front of the pod. The wind howled in, smelling like tar.
At least it was night. At some point during my stay in the HighBoovperial Palace it had gotten dark, and I remembered just enough of what J.Lo had told me to know that it was going to stay that way for days. It took a long time for New Boovworld to get out from Saturn’s shadow.
I balanced on the lip of the open hatch. Below me were thousands of smaller buildings, all of them glassy and round and lit up like bulbs on a marquee. Amid these were towers, antennae, bubbleship buildings with octopus hoses, a big telecloner on a low rooftop. Smokestacks and a careless fog. And, straight ahead, a Boov squinting at me from his living room. I saw the slant of a big screen. Looked like they were newscasting about tonight’s presidential debate.
I made that little circular movement with my hand that means roll down your window, but the Boov just frowned and shrugged. “Open your window!” I shouted. “Please!” But he only stared back, blankly.
I went back for the hoverbutt and showed it to him. I tried to mime with my fingers what I wanted to do. My pod was a little too far away from the building to jump, but I hoped with the hoverbutt under me I might just make it. I thought I’d done a good job of silently explaining myself, but the Boov just winced and offered me a houseplant.
“HUMAN!” trumpeted the air, all around. “LIE DOWN ON THE FLOOR OF YOUR VEHICLE!” It buzzed in my ears and rattled the windowpane in front of me. I looked left and right and discovered that a cluster of green cruisers had snuck up on me. The Boov inside the building retreated behind an armchair.
I put my hands up, but one of them was still holding the hoverbutt. Which I figured was pretty harmless, but maybe it wasn’t as commonplace as I’d assumed.
“DROP THE DEVICE!” said one of the Boov in the green cruisers. “DRRROP IT! THERE’S A GOOD BOY. DROPIT!”
But instead I put it under my butt and stepped out into nothing.
Which right away was obviously a complete mistake. I’d thought the hoverbutt would let me fall as fast or slow as I wanted, but nope! I just dropped like a brick. A Styrofoam brick—low gravity and all. Still, good for a quick getaway, bad for every other conceivable reason.
The fog roiled all around. And, looking straight down as I was, the antennae passed like arrows. Like lances. Every smokestack was the barrel of a big gun. And all of it in slow motion as I fell at a rate that felt just breezy enough not to kill me, but just fast enough to get me excused from gym classes for the rest of my life. I leaned left and right, trying to steer, trying to prolong my dumb death or whatever for just another second longer. Coughing, eyes tearing against the sting of smoke and stupid failure, I didn’t notice at first that a swarm of tiny bubbles was rising up to meet me.
Then the bubbles were fizzing all around me, buffeting the hoverbutt. I got so startled that I dropped it, and I watched helplessly as it was knocked off course and sailed into the darkness. Was this some kind of attack?
The bubbles kept coming, popping now against my backside and pushing feebly against my momentum. Now they came larger, big as baseballs, and larger still, a volley of volleyballs. I was actually slowing down. I looked up and saw the flashing lights of Boovcop cruisers descending after me.
Then the bubbles abruptly stopped.
I was picking up speed again. A familiar little silver bee rose up in front of my face.
“It’s you!” I shouted over the rush of stale air. “That...billboard sign thing! Help me! Keep hitting me with bub—”
The bee swiveled around and blew a bubble the size of a washing machine, which shot out and hit me in the face.
Rather than slowing me down, it just knocked me backward. Backward, and into the open mouth of a high-rise sucktunnel.
FOOMP.
I went into a bend, whapped against the sides of the tube, and slid into a curve. And then I got barfed out the other end of the sucktunnel, proceeded to plow through a safetypillow, and touched down improbably in the center of a dark alley. No, that’s not right—it wasn’t a touchdown, exactly. A smackdown? Like pro wrestling, it looked both painful and fake.
I got up, shaky and panting. My seat hurt, but a glance down the alley showed me what could have been: the hoverbutt was hoverbusted, bits and s
tuffing everywhere. None of it my own personal bits and stuffing.
The silver bee dropped into view and hovered in front of my face.
“Hello,” I said.
It pulled back and chased its tail, blowing bubbles until it formed a word.
“I know that one,” I said. “That’s ‘hello.’”
The bubbles popped and the bee made a new word. I knew this one too.
YES.
“Were you...waiting outside the palace for me all this time?” I asked it. “How did you know it was me in the rocketpod?”
The billboard bee’s antennae crackled and snapped. It juggled its bubbles and spat out more. It formed one word, then another, then another, and I had to put up my hands.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. I only know ‘hello,’ ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘bathroom.’”
All the bubbles popped, or drifted away. The bee stared at me.
I thought about what J.Lo had said, about Boov moving their heads and blinking to avoid looking at these things.
“Aw,” I said. “Are they not paying enough attention to you?”
NO.
Sirens were growing closer, but they sounded spread out. Like they’d lost me. There wasn’t anyone else in this alley, which was open on one end.
“Do you know where Sector Three is?” I asked the bee.
NO.
“Can you...spell ‘Sector Three’?”
It buzzed around, pooping bubbles, big ones and small, dot dot dot, around and around. Finally it came to rest in the center of a complex constellation. I did my best to memorize the pattern.
“I’m looking for any signs that look like that, then,” I said. I looked the bee in its weird face. If that was even a face. “Thanks for helping me. Will you help me some more?”
YES.
“I’m calling you Bill. That all right?”
YES.
“Okay, Bill,” I said, starting down the alley. “Let’s go.”
TEN
The streets of New Boovworld were all narrow and clean. In a city where everyone took public transport and all the big vehicles floated overhead, the strips between houses and buildings were only as wide as a driveway and smooth, with rounded sides. They were filled with Boov on foot. Occasionally a scooter went humming by.
The street right ahead of me was lined with what looked like giant gumball machines—pedestal bases with flap-covered entrance ramps, topped by big frosted globes. Kind of grim-looking light gray gumball machines, mind you, like if the glass weren’t frosted you’d see that all the gum was unflavored and beige.
“Are those houses?” I whispered to Bill.
YES.
The alley where Bill and I were crouching was pretty dark, but it was also an alley with a sucktunnel at the end of it, so I wasn’t expecting much privacy. Sure enough, it wasn’t more than a minute before a Boov turned my way, and there wasn’t any place to hide.
The Boov wore a real wiggly outfit and had one of those little winged armadillo things on a leash. He paused a few feet away from me and scowled at his pet. The armadillo noticed me right away.
“Get on with it already,” the Boov told the armadillo. “Debate is starting soon.”
The armadillo lifted its tail and dropped something blue out its backside. It looked like a racquetball. And bounced like a racquetball, and rolled to the side of the alley like a racquetball.
“Good boy,” said the Boov, and when they turned to leave again, he saw me.
He froze. The armadillo thing beat its little wings and strained at the leash, wanting to sniff me or bite me or make me a racquetball or whatever.
I glanced at Bill, who was hovering over my shoulder, and then I gave the Boov a reluctant wave. The Boov’s eyes shifted between me and the racquetball.
“I was going to pick it up,” he told me. I didn’t say anything. “I wasn’t going to leave it,” he added, and pressed his sleeve; a rubber glove snapped up over his hand. “See now?” he said, retrieving the dropping and putting it in the pocket of his coat.
“Okay,” I said.
He frowned at me. “You are a human,” he said. “That is weird.”
Then he dragged his armadillo back out into the street.
I exhaled. “All right,” I said. “That could have gone a lot worse.” I looked at Bill. Bill looked at me, I think. “Still,” I said, “if I keep getting noticed like that, people are going to talk. Word’ll spread back to Smek, right? I need a disguise. Let me tell you what I’m thinking.”
I told Bill what I was thinking. So if anyone was watching from the street about a minute later, they would have seen a five-foot-tall bubbleperson mosey out of the alley. If anyone had been watching from the street.
“Going out of business sale!” I said, hoping people would mistake me for a talking billboard and therefore ignore me. “Everything must go!”
But the street was empty.
Not that I noticed this right away—my face was covered in layers of tiny bubbles. I probably waddled around shouting for another minute or two. But eventually I said, “Bill? Can you uncover my eyes?” Bill, who was perched atop my head, snapped his antennae. The fizz pulled back from my face.
Yep, empty. Just a couple of odd birds on a signpost.
“What...happened to everyone?” I whispered. As it turned out, I got my answer a moment later when a little drone passed overhead, scaring the birds. They glided off on kite wings like flying squirrels.
“HighBoov debate starting in thirty-seven seconds!” blared the drone as it appeared over the street and disappeared behind a gumball house. “HighBoov debate starting in thirty-three seconds!”
“Huh,” I said. “Well, all right! ’Bout time something went my way.”
I searched the street. Opposite the side with all the gumball machines were larger buildings that I’d learn later were the Gorgwar Veterans’ Clubhouse Number 17 and a condiment silo. Everywhere there were signs: some bubbly, some flat and covered with writing and pictograms. They arched over the street and jutted off every building, like fins. I remembered that this city had only been finished for a year—nobody had grown up here; nobody knew their way around. Lucky for me.
I said, “Bill? That little symbol in the corner of all the signs looks almost like ‘Sector Three.’ But it isn’t, is it?”
NO.
“Does it say ‘Sector Two’?”
YES.
I smirked and looked behind me, where I could still just see the bald curve of the HighBoovperial Palace in the distance.
“Betcha anything that’s Sector One back there. I think we need to keep moving away from the palace.”
Which we did, cutting directly though the narrow gap between two gumball machines, then two more, then across a street, repeat. I still wasn’t a hundred percent used to the gravity, and the occasional misstep sent me careening off one house or the next, which only made me want to run faster, which only made me bump into more houses. And despite it all I was wheezing. Bill gave me a look. Which was probably all in my head, since he didn’t have a face.
“It’s harder than it looks,” I panted. “Maybe the air’s thin here or something.”
We passed a red dirt lot that was tangled with branching stalks of transparent tubing, all growing up from bell jars on the ground. Here and there a segment of tubing lit up like the whole mess was filled with fireflies. I didn’t slow down enough to figure it all out. We must have passed fifty houses before I stumbled into the open of another street and found our way blocked.
An absolutely colossal building hunkered on the other side, maybe five stories tall but about a hundred wide. Like a skyscraper on its side. I guess I’d already gone native, because I thought it was weird looking for being boxy. Boxy, but not plain: it was covered in cream-colored puffy pads like it was quilted. My mom had a tissue-box cover like that; I guess it was the same kind of thing. Ramps curved up to it from every direction.
I bent at the waist, huffing. “Need a minute,” I
told Bill.
Strangest of all was that this building didn’t have a sign on it anywhere. What it did have was something like a shining metal eye set in its front, and this was swiveling around and casting a spotlight all over the street. It made me anxious; I stiffened and hunched low, looking back the way I’d come, when it abruptly shifted and fixed its gaze right on me. There was a flash.
“MUSEUM OF NOISES,” said a voice.
Then the eye beam resumed searching the boulevard for someone else to look at. I glanced at Bill.
“Did you hear that?”
NO.
“I think it said, ‘Museum of Noises.’”
After a few seconds of giving the rest of the street the crazy eye, the beam came back to me. Flash.
“MUSEUM OF NOISES,” I heard again.
“I think this is the Museum of Noises,” I told Bill. I stared at it a second. “Let’s cut through, if it’s open.” I’d really lucked out with this whole debate thing, but I knew enough about Boovish technology to not assume that the people in these gumball houses couldn’t see me just because I couldn’t see them.
“MUSEUM OF NOISES,” the eye beam told me.
“Yeah, got it,” I said.
We hustled up one of the ramps, and a door opened on its own. I stepped through and into a big oblong foyer with an information booth and doors and ramps leading everywhere. It was as empty as I’d been hoping. Quiet. A sudden tick of the foundation settling, nothing more. There was a smaller eye beam inside the entrance, and it turned to face me.
“HORK HORK HORK huk HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK hahn hahn HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK mahaign HORK huk HORK HORK HORK HORK HORK,” said the eye beam. It sounded like a hundred cats all throwing up at the same time. Which is not empty talk—I heard that once.
The beam kept shooting me barf noises while I read a nearby plaque. Like in the exhibit at the palace, the signs here were written in Boovish, English, and Chinese. Not good English, mind you: there were some translation problems. I don’t know how good or bad the Chinese was, but as languages go, I don’t think it’s supposed to have so many smileys.