“Ah! Looksee? The Boov are helping.”
It was obvious where he was pointing. There was something like a transparent soccer ball filled with shampoo near the main road. People with buckets and coolers crowded around it, but they’d stopped whatever they were doing to watch us pass.
“It is a telecloner,” said J.Lo. “The peoples can use it to make water, and to make food.”
“Food? I thought the telecloners couldn’t do that. The Boov ones, I mean.”
I wished I hadn’t added that bit about the Boov. I hadn’t meant anything by it, but I thought I heard an edge in J.Lo’s voice afterward.
“Is not complicated,” he said. “The telecloners can make a healthy milk shake. Has everything you need.”
“That’s nice of them,” I said. “Nice of the Boov.” And the crazy thing was, I really meant it. The Boov had invaded our planet, erased our monuments, taken our homes, and dumped us in a state they didn’t want, and I was already so used to the whole idea that it seemed like a sweet gesture that they hadn’t left us to starve in the dark.
I coasted Slushious down a hill past what used to be a Buy-Mor but now seemed to be home to a bunch of people. They gawked and pointed at our floating car, so I started shouting “Magic trick!” out the window as we passed. It didn’t mean anything, but it got about half of them to nod and go back to what they’d been doing.
It wasn’t ten minutes before we were stopped. I saw blue and red lights flashing behind me, and heard a siren, but you couldn’t imagine a sweeter sound. It was just a siren—nothing weird about it, nothing new. It was an ordinary cop car, carrying two ordinary probably-scared-half-out-of-their-minds cops.
I pulled over. The squad car slowed and parked some distance behind me. A man cop got out and crouched behind the open door, training his gun on Slushious. A woman cop got out the driver’s side and crept slowly up on us like she expected the car to change into a robot. After a minute of this she leaned over and looked in my window.
I thought the police officer was supposed to take the lead in these kinds of situations, but this woman just stared at us. I smiled back sweetly.
“Hi.”
The policewoman frowned at my “hi.” I think her instincts kicked in.
“Do you know why I stopped you today, ma’am?” she said.
“Because I’m only eleven and my car is floating?”
The officer stared for another moment, and coughed.
“Yes,” she said.
“Sounds like you’d better take me down to the station, then,” I replied.
I figured I wasn’t going to find Mom by driving all over Arizona shouting her name out the window, so I knew I’d end up going to the authorities anyway, if there were any. At the station I explained about my mom’s abduction, and the mysterious Boov who rebuilt our car, and how my brother JayJay would throw up for ten minutes if anyone tried to touch or talk to him. I got a lot of practice telling this story, as I had to repeat it to no less than fifty people over the next few days. Soon I had a police escort down to Flagstaff, where a lot of former government types were trying to collect information and help people reunite with friends and family. It was funny that there were so many people trying to find one another when we were all crowded into one state like this. But I guess unless you were all on the same rocketpod, you had no way of knowing if your loved ones were living in Mohawk or Happy Jack or Tuba City. I swear I’m not making these names up.
The Bureau of Missing Persons of the United State of America was in a university building. I was introduced to a thin man in a little suit named Mitch. Two more men in identical suits stood behind him with their hands behind their backs.
“Name,” said Mitch. I was staring at the pine trees and snow-speckled mountains through a window and wondering why I’d thought Arizona was all cactus and sand dunes. It took me a few seconds to recognize that he was asking me a question.
“Oh, um. Gratuity Tucci.”
He glared at me over his clipboard. “I don’t have time for jokes?” he said. “I have a lot of people to see? What is your name.”
“Gratuity. G-r-a—”
“That is not a name.”
I frowned. “Isn’t that sort of between me and my mom?”
“Uh-huh? And is this your mom?” he said, motioning at the policewoman who had pulled us over and was now in the corner trying to keep J.Lo entertained without speaking or making any sudden moves.
“Wow,” I said. “You are good. Here I am, looking for my mom, and you find her before I even leave the building.”
“I have a lot of people to see?” Mitch said again. “For the time being I am going to put you down as Gratuity.”
“It’ll have to do.”
“Last name.”
“Tucci.”
“Middle initial.”
“I don’t have one.”
Mitch looked at me like I didn’t have a middle name on purpose.
“What is the name of the person or persons you wish to find.”
“Lucy Tucci,” I said. “My mom.”
“How old is she.”
“Uh, thirty.”
“And what is the nature of your relationship with Lucy Tucci.”
“Ummm, pretty good,” I said. “I mean, we fight sometimes—”
“No,” said Mitch. “No. Who is she to you. What is your connection.”
“She’s my mom. I’m her daughter.”
Mitch scribbled on his clipboard. I suddenly remembered a promise I’d made.
“Oh! And can you also find, uh…Marta! Marta Gonzales. And when you do tell her Christian and Alberto are safe and living under Happy Mouse Kingdom.”
You could actually see a little part of Mitch die inside. He hugged his clipboard against his stomach.
“There is no form for that,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “could you—”
“If there’s no form, I don’t see how we could possibly…Michaels? See if there’s a form for that?”
“Yessir,” said one of the men in suits behind him before hustling away. Up to now I’d assumed they were just back there to catch Mitch if he fell over.
The policewoman walked up and said, “Your brother is eating pencils.”
“He’ll do that,” I answered.
“You know,” she said, “you should put your mom’s name on the Lost List.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mitch. “You may as well tell her to throw darts at a map.”
“What’s the Lost List?” I asked.
It seemed that Americans were not waiting for the Bureau of Missing Persons to find everyone for them. Some people had taken to carrying lists of names around. Everyone had ten names, and when they got a new one it was added to the top and a name was crossed off the bottom. As they went about their day they might call out, “John Hancock looking for Susan B. Anthony,” or “Buddy Holly looking for Ritchie Valens.” If you heard them and you knew a Susan B. Anthony or a Ritchie Valens, you’d stop and tell them what you could.
“A lot of people have been reunited that way,” said the woman.
“Do what you like?” sniffed Mitch. “Okay? But the Bureau is the simplest, fastest way of finding missing persons I know about. Now here’s your ticket,” he said, handing me a blue slip of paper.
It read, CASE FILE #9003041-CHARLIE BRAVO in black ballpoint, and under that, LUCY TUCCI, MOTHER OF CLAIMANT. On the reverse was a coupon for a car wash.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Hold on to that,” he said. “You won’t be able to claim your mother if you lose it. Check back with us in ten to fourteen business days.”
They learned to really hate me at the Bureau of Missing Persons. I did not check back in ten to fourteen business days. I checked back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. All the while J.Lo and I lived in Slushious, just outside of town. They wanted to find us something better, but I resisted. We moved around a lot so we wouldn’t be too easy to sneak up on
(J.Lo had to get out of his costume once in a while), and we used the showers and bathrooms on the university campus. I registered Mom with the Lost List people. They had a sort of office in the back room of an empty pet store. There weren’t many working phone lines yet, but they had a shortwave radio. This was different from a regular radio in two ways I could tell. First, you could talk into a shortwave. If someone else was listening to your frequency, they could hear you, and the other Lost List offices in other cities always listened to the right frequency. Second, people who use shortwave radios really like shortwave radios. I had to listen to this pale guy named Phil talk about his for forty minutes.
J.Lo and Pig and I got on okay. We were out of food, but there was plenty of milk shake. J.Lo was right about that. Most communities near cities had teleclone machines for water and food, but people were trying to farm anyway, because the milk shakes tasted like whipped cardboard.
In the evenings, J.Lo worked on the teleclone booth. I kept coming back to the charred and broken corner of the cage.
“Is it missing something important here?” I asked finally. “Is the damage bad?”
“I do not believes so. Probably only lost a couple of nozzles. Still workable. Hold the flashlight still, please.”
“Are you sure? I mean, if we ever try this thing, I don’t want to teleport out the other side missing a foot or something.”
“You will have on both feet. The damage, it is lucky, actually. It disenabled the receiver.”
“That’s good?”
“That is good. With no receiver, no mores Gorg could be made, or teleported. With no receiver, the Gorgship could no send the self-destruct command. Hm.”
“So if the Boov hadn’t damaged the booth just right, the Chief never would have been able to steal it in the first place. And you can fix it?”
“Sh,” whispered J.Lo. “Concentrating.”
He looked over every inch of the cage, the machinery, the bits he’d disassembled and set aside. He put the whole thing together in a matter of minutes, then took it apart again.
“I cannot understands,” he said finally. “It is just as a Boov telecloner. It is alls the same.”
“There must be something different.”
J.Lo didn’t respond. He crouched by a nozzle and frowned at it.
“I bet they all got out of Roswell,” I said. “The guys had that car. And they’d have the Chief’s truck, too.”
J.Lo whacked the nozzle with a stick.
“Plus the Party Patrol car,” I added. “Did you leave the key in it?”
“Hm?”
“That key you made for the Party car. Did you leave it in the ignition?”
“Ah. Yes.”
“So they could have used that too,” I said. “If they wanted.”
Nearby, two crickets were talking back and forth, again and again, same question every time:
Are you there?
Yes. Are you there?
Yes. Are you there?
Yes. Are—
J.Lo smacked himself in the eyes. “It is alls the same!”
“Shhh!”
He pored over the booth, brushing his fingertips across the nozzles, mumbling to himself. The crickets picked up where they’d left off.
“Well, you said it still has to be connected to a computer, right?”
“Yes,” said J.Lo. “By signal. But this makes no difference.”
“But…” I said, “couldn’t a computer keep track—”
“No,” said J.Lo. “No no no. Is too complicated. No Boov has ever built a computer so powerful as to keep on track all of the participles of a person.”
“Not even one of your gas-cloud computers?”
“Not even. To be safe enough, this computer would have to being thousands of times larger than a Boov ship. Than even the largest Boov ship. If it even could be done. Who would build such a thing? Where would a person keep it?”
“It would really be that big?”
J.Lo chuffed. “It would have to be alike a small moon!”
We each stared at the other without speaking. Even the crickets stopped chirping. Then we both turned at once and looked at the small purple moon hanging over Mexico.
“You don’t think…” I said.
“No,” said J.Lo, but he sounded less certain. “The electric brain would have to take up the most of the ship. No space for alls the Gorg and supplies.”
“How many Gorg and supplies do you need when you can just clone more?”
“Hm.”
“This is good,” I said. “If you’re right, then you can fix the receiver and build more teleclone booths, and we can use them, too. Humans will be able to use the Gorg’s own computers against them.”
“Possibily.”
“We’re gonna have to tell someone. Soon. Maybe someone at the Bureau of Missing Persons. I was planning on maybe dropping by there tomorrow to see if they found my mom anyway.”
We did go to the bureau the next morning, but the offices were empty except for the suit man named Michaels.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said without any hint of surprise in his voice. “We haven’t found your mom yet.”
“Yeah, well, not to be rude,” I said with a wave of my arm, “but it doesn’t look like you guys are trying very hard.”
“Tch. It’s just because of the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
Michaels grinned. “I thought everyone knew. The meeting with the Boov representatives on the quad. It’s going on right now.”
“What are the Boov meeting with us for?” I wondered aloud. We were walking to the center of campus to check it out.
“Maybies we should tell these Boov about our telecloner,” said J.Lo.
I wasn’t crazy about that idea. I couldn’t blame J.Lo for still wanting to think the best about his own people, but I thought the Boov might just arrest J.Lo, use this new information to beat the Gorg, and go on treating us humans like the rejects they thought we were.
There was a big crowd of people on the quad—a thousand at least, facing a plywood stage. And on the stage stood five Boov. One of them had fancier clothes than the rest. He was speaking to the crowd.
J.Lo gasped.
“Smek!” he whispered. “It is Captain Smek himself!”
“They are a horrible sort,” Smek was saying, “and will not show the Noble Savages of Smekland the respectfulness that you have enjoyed fromto the Boov. The Gorg are known acrosst the galaxy as the Takers, and they canto only take and take and take!”
The Boov guarding Smek snapped their fingers again and again. It’s what the Boov do to applaud.
J.Lo was shaking and pushing up against me. I kept a hand on his shoulder and steered us to the back of the audience. “We knows of the meeting between to the Gorg and Smekland leaders yesterday,” said Smek. “The Gorg have probabilies made for you some fancy promises. Do not be believing them! They lie! They will enslave your race, just as to they have done so many others! They will destruct our world!”
There was a lot of grumbling in the audience. Smek was not a popular guy around this part of the Milky Way, for obvious reasons.
“In closing,” said Captain Smek, “the Boov are beseeching you: do not give up to the Gorg our world because of petty grudgings! Fight with us—”
A guardBoov whispered something to Smek.
“Fight alongside us,” Smek said, “for a brighter, shiny Smekland!”
The guardBoovs snapped their fingers again.
Smek took a breath. “Repito. Señoras y Caballeros del Estado Unido de America—”
“Fat lot of good this’ll do,” I whispered to J.Lo. But I would be wrong about that. Some people would end up joining the Boov to fight the Gorg. Not that it made any difference.
Folks were already leaving, talking among themselves, mostly about how they didn’t believe a word of it. A few gave J.Lo weird looks, but there was plenty of reason for that without suspecting he was a Boov. It might seem crazy that we pa
ssed him off as easy as we did, but I think people mostly see what they expect to see. You could look at us and suppose we were a girl and her alien friend wearing a Halloween costume in August, or you could see two kids being kids. Which would you see, honestly?
“Don’t look at him,” one mother even said when she noticed her daughter was staring at J.Lo. “He’s just trying to get attention.”
When I finally noticed Smek again, he was repeating the final, resounding line of his speech:
“—para una Tierra luminosa de Smek!”
Then came the finger snapping again. By now some of the little kids in the front were doing it too. A few adults booed, but most everyone who had stayed was silent.
Captain Smek stepped down from his stool and left the podium, and a little man took his place.
“Oh, look,” I said to J.Lo. “It’s Mitch from the bureau.”
He was holding up his hands and shaking his head at the people who still jeered at Smek, and trying to hold the dwindling crowd. Smek and his bunch looked like embarrassed children as they hustled away from the quad.
“People? People?” he was saying. “Can we show a little hospitality? Captain Smek took the time to explain his case, and that took some courage, and now I think we should give him a hand. No? Is everyone leaving? Just a couple of announcements? Tucson Airport District leader Dan Landry will be speaking tonight about his recent conference with the Gorg? That’s in Prochnow Auditorium at eight…also…People? Also, there are new test dates scheduled for doctors to get recertified? These are posted on the big tree next to the…thing…you know the one. Until we can prove who is a real doctor and who isn’t, people, remember: use good judgment. Just because he has his own scalpel doesn’t mean he should take your appendix out.”
Nearly everyone was gone now. J.Lo and I made our way up to the stage.
“One last announcement? People? No? Don’t come crying to the bureau when you don’t know where to get your milk shake vouchers. Oh, hello, Gratuity.”
His voice was still being amplified, so he pushed the microphone aside and sat down on the edge of the stage.
“Your mom will be found soon. Have some patience?”
“I talked to Michaels already,” I said. “We just came to hear the speaker.”