“Be honored,” he said, then caught sight of the telecloner. “How’s my booth?”
“Your Boovish shower booth?” I said quickly. “It’s fine.”
The Chief stared at me.
“Good to know,” he said, and sat down with a chorus of pops and creaks at our dinette.
After dinner J.Lo helped Mom wash up, and I walked with the Chief out to his truck.
“Got some friends and cousins comin’ down from the res,” he said. “Should be here in a couple days. And I’m gonna leave tomorrow morning to round up some more. Friends of friends, and air force types. People we can trust.”
“Do you know some of the Papago Indians around here?” I asked.
“Tohono O’Odham,” said the Chief. “The Tohono O’Odham Nation. Papago is derogatory. Means ‘bean eaters.’ And yeah, I know a few. What’s the story ’bout the ‘Boovish shower’?”
“Oh, yeah. My mom’s been working with that Dan Landry guy, and he seems pretty pro-Gorg. So I’m worried maybe Mom is, too.”
“Heard a lot about him. Seems like a snake.”
“I think she likes him,” I said. “I guess he’s nice looking, in a cornflakes kind of way. He probably likes her, too. He sure wants her around a lot. I mean, we’re a hundred miles from the Mexican border and she’s still the best Spanish speaker he can find?”
“Be careful of him. He’s got some skeletons in his closet.”
“No,” I said, “just brooms.”
“Huh?”
“He has a broom closet attached to his office. I almost walked into it.”
“That’s weird.”
I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Hey, Lincoln!” I shouted, and ran up to where he strained against his leash, nearly pulling the truck in two. I patted him down, and he made sure my face was good and slimy.
“Do you two need a place to stay?” I asked.
“You don’t have the space. We’re fine sleeping in the camper bed. You could store a couple boxes for me, though, so we got a little more room.”
I walked back to the casino with two boxes of the Chief’s war souvenirs to put in Slushious. He’d promised to be back in two or three days.
The next morning, word started to spread: the Nothing to Worry About Festival had been rescheduled. Excellent Day was no longer Labor Day. Excellent Day was tomorrow.
“That can’t be true,” said Mom. “Why would they do that?”
I ran outside to look for the Chief’s truck, but he’d already left. As I walked back I saw a great swarm of Boov ships to the east. They flew slowly, close together, not on the attack. They were going to formally surrender to the Gorg.
Six times that morning I saw J.Lo stare at our old cell phone.
“Chief’s gone,” I said as I reentered our place.
“Old people get up really early,” said Mom. “He probably left hours ago. Don’t worry…this place is always full of rumors.”
But by early afternoon the Gorg’s crab robots were clacking around, delivering the news.
“DUE TO UNFORESEEN EXCELLENCE,” Gorg faces announced through the robots’ jittery screens, “THE EXCELLENT DAY FESTIVITIES WILL BE HELD TOMORROW MORNING AT SUNRISE. HUMANS OF THE AIRPORT DISTRICT WILL MEET ON THE AIRPORT TARMAC TO WATCH THE BOOV RETREAT. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY! MANDATORY! MESSAGE ENDS.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Mom. “It must be a mistake. I’m going to talk to Daniel. Don’t go anywhere this time. For real.”
She ran out of our apartment still holding one shoe.
Without a word J.Lo went back to the dishes he’d been washing. I stood and rested a hand against the dinette. Then I thought maybe I should sit, but I got up again a second later and stared at my shoes. Stalling.
There were ten different kinds of playing cards in the pattern of the carpet. There were hundreds of cards, of course, but they were the same ten, over and over. Sixteen poker chips, eight red and eight blue.
“The Hoegaardens have dice on their carpet,” I said.
“Ah,” said J.Lo. “Yes?”
“Yeah. Pairs of dice all over. All the pairs add up to seven.”
“I see.”
“They live where the craps tables used to be,” I added. “Pardon my language.”
We fell into a silence again. J.Lo’s hands sloshed around in the water.
“We really have to talk,” I said. “Don’t you think? We have to?”
J.Lo grabbed a bowl and dunked it in the sink.
“If you are wanting to. What should we talk about?”
I’d been holding my breath without realizing, and the last of it came out in a puff. “You know…”
“Ahh. About the Boov. About me leaving Earth.”
“You never really said what your plans were.”
“I would be as a criminal to the Boov,” he said, scrubbing the bowl. “The greatest bungler ever. I brought to our doorsteps the Gorg.”
“Would they…kill you?”
“No. The Boov are not having capitalized punishment any longer. I would be made a prisoner. Or given a very bad job.”
“Like what?”
“Legtaster, maybe. Or Bearer of Droppings. It would be bad, but not so very. These jobs have a certain quiet dignity.”
“Uh-huh.”
We stared at each other for a moment, then J.Lo rinsed the bowl and picked up a plate.
“Sooo…should I leave, then?” he asked. “Go back to the Boov?”
“I can’t tell you what to do. It’s up to you. Right?”
J.Lo looked into the sink and nodded a little nod. It was like I could see him deciding. It was like watching a slowly falling balloon that would burst if nobody caught it.
“But,” I said, “but if you…It would be harder around here if you left, of course. More chores for everyone else. That’s all I’m saying.”
“True.”
“It would be hard to explain to everyone why JayJay wasn’t around anymore. If you left. But you need to do what’s best for you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m only saying it would be harder. And you could give us a lot of help getting rid of the Gorg, knowing what you know.”
J.Lo paused with his hands in the water. I suddenly felt like I was standing very strangely, so I shifted my weight to the other leg, but it didn’t feel any better. The house was hot. I could feel it in my face.
“It seems,” said J.Lo, “it seems it would be the best if I stayed. There are things here to do. I can be a help to my family.”
He looked like he was going to say something else, then nodded and picked up some spoons. He dipped them in the water. I stood by him at the counter and dried as he washed.
“So it’s just like the milk shake cloners,” said Mom, looking at the booth. “But for people.”
She’d come home angry, unable to see Landry or even get near his building, for all the Gorg patrols around. So J.Lo and I told her about the telecloner, knowing that we couldn’t reach the Chief and we were almost out of time.
“It’s not just cloning, though,” I said. “It’s teleporting, too.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“A person or thing,” said J.Lo, “can be sent from one booth into another. To another booth on the Earth, or inside the Gorg ship. Maybies evento booths on other planets.”
“Like e-mailing a person,” said Mom.
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you told me. But we need to get other people in on this.”
I nodded.
“Mr. Hoegaarden was a police officer,” said Mom. “He knows some good people. Here. Take these books back to Mrs. Hoegaarden and see if anyone’s home.”
I took the books and walked across the casino, cutting through the kitchen to the Hoegaarden’s area. It was a smaller section than the slots floor where we lived, with only two apartments and a single wobbling ceiling fan that looked like it was trying to unstick itself and fly away. It was hard to tell one ap
artment from another, but they’d written their name on the back of a keno ticket and pinned it to their door. I knocked.
My knock was maybe the third loudest noise I’ve ever heard. That doesn’t sound as impressive as I’d like, but it had been quite a year for loud noises.
Mrs. Hoegaarden threw open the door.
“I didn’t do it,” I said. “I swear.”
I really hadn’t. The noise had actually come from out in the main hall. The air still rang with it.
We raced to the corner and peeked around to see a Gorg lift a change machine over his head.
Frightened people were pressed up against the walls, as far from Gorg as they could be. Just past him I saw the door he’d come through—it was a metal taco shell now, and dangling off one hinge.
“HUMAN PERSONS!” Gorg spat. “WHERE IS THE ONE CALLED GRATUITUCCI!”
Oh, God, I thought. Why is it always me?
“Um,” said Joachim, “who?”
“GRATUITUCCI! GRATUCCITY! OR SOMETHING SIMILAR!” said Gorg, and threw the machine to the floor. It spilled its silver guts out onto the carpet.
Our neighbors were silent. But they must have understood who Gorg was talking about. Mrs. Hoegaarden sure did.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Listen: take this hall, go in the first door, through the office, through the door on the other side, and you’ll be in the hallway with the restrooms and the exit to the loading dock. Hurry!”
I did as she said and ran through the casino. I could still hear Gorg’s booming voice.
“I WAS TOLD TO GO TO THE LARGE OFFENSIVELY COLORED BUILDING. THE BUILDING WHERE HUMANS WHO ARE BAD AT MATH GIVE AWAY THEIR MONEY! THIS IS THAT PLACE! BRING ME GRATUITUCCI!”
I slipped through the last door and out to the blinding air, stumbled down off the loading dock, and sprinted around to the emergency exit where Slushious was parked. J.Lo was already there in his costume, tying the telecloner to the top of the car.
“I have Pig,” he whispered. “We should drive away—Gorg might smell me.”
“Okay. Where’s my mom?”
J.Lo looked at me, then back at the casino.
I’d left her again.
“We have to help her.”
“We have to hide away the telecloner!” gasped J.Lo. “He will search out here!”
I swiveled around and noticed the big white poker tent lying rumpled and deflated on the ground.
“Looks like he already searched there. C’mon.”
We drove up to the edge of the tent, and I lifted the surprisingly heavy canvas while J.Lo drove Slushious underneath. I was already running back to the emergency exit before J.Lo even crawled out from under the tent. I got close enough to see that the door had been torn off its hinges.
“No,” I whispered. “No no no.”
I ducked into our apartment and saw it had been trashed. The sinks were overturned and leafs of scorched books fluttered through the air. But Mom was gone. There was no sign of her.
I bolted through our apartment door, to see a crowd of people staring out the front of the casino.
“Gratuity!” said Joachim as I approached. “Hold on—”
I ignored him and forced my way through the crowd, just in time to see two Gorg strapping jetpacks to their backs. One of them had my mom thrown over his shoulder.
“QU LU EHED SEG FIP’W AR NI’IZS IHEX?” said the Gorg holding Mom as he slapped the other Gorg across the face.
“FUD,” said the other, poking and then punching the first Gorg in the arm. “NAG IG’F TAD’Q GU VEF’G FGAB, LU W’ZO?”
“Your mom…she said she was you,” explained Joachim.
Then something amazing happened. The Gorg holding Mom made a noise.
“Was that a sneeze?” someone asked.
J.Lo arrived just in time to see the other Gorg sneeze, too. Then both of them were in fits, sneezing back and forth as they fiddled with their jetpacks.
Mom raised her head and looked right at me. Then the rockets ignited, and all three of them disappeared into the darkening sky.
I was breathing hard. Everyone around started trying to console me and put their hands on my shoulder, but I only wanted them to go away.
“Say,” J.Lo whispered, “they sneeze near to any person who has spent a lot of time around a Boov. Did you notice? But…the Boov never did make them sick before.”
“No, the Boov never did,” I agreed.
And suddenly I had a plan after all.
“Oh, are they gonna get it,” I said as we soared across the desert. “I will destroy them. You can’t kidnap my mom and expect me not to destroy you. I would have destroyed the Boov, but you gave her back just in time.”
“Thank goodness,” said J.Lo. “Explain, please, again about the cats.”
“The Gorg are allergic to cats! Seriously allergic! You saw how they were around Mom.”
“But Tipmom is not a cat.”
“We have cat hair all over us. Trust me. When you own a cat it’s unavoidable. And why else would the Gorg go to so much trouble to get rid of all of them? And Mom—Mom said she sat right next to some Gorg before we arrived, and they didn’t sneeze at all. But after we brought Pig into the casino? Boom!”
“Boom!” shouted J.Lo. “Boom!”
“Thank God we didn’t lose Pig that night. Thank God we kept her safe.”
“But whereto are we going?”
“Somewhere secret,” I said as I steered Slushious through camps of scattered tents. “Somewhere we can hatch our plan.”
“This is exciting,” said J.Lo. “We are sneaky agent men, like Bond James Bond.”
“I don’t know where you pick this stuff up.”
All traces of the city were far behind us when we neared a rustic sign that read “Old Tucson Studios.”
“Oh, perfect,” I said.
I pulled Slushious into the center of a Wild West ghost town in the middle of the mountains. There were authentic-looking saloons and general stores and a Spanish church lining the dusty street.
“This should do,” I said.
“Now we can teleport to the Gorg bases or their ship,” said J.Lo, “and find Tipmom and bring her home!”
“We’re going to do a lot more than that,” I said.
“Yes? What are we going to do?”
I grinned and said, “Feedback loop.”
“Feedback loop?”
“Feedback loop.”
I stood in the middle of the street, with J.Lo eyeing me nervously. If I’d had a six-shooter I could have looked just like Clint Eastwood, but the only thing I was staring down was a teleclone booth. Plus, I was wearing a World War II army helmet, so the image was shot.
The helmet was way too big for me, but my hair kept it in place. I had a handful of aspirin—the cold-expanding foam kind—for emergencies. The Gorg telecloner had cloned them from the last remaining pill in J.Lo’s toolbox. It worked. The aspirin were complex things no Boov cloner could make, but we’d made them.
In the last twenty minutes, J.Lo had put the machine back together and inspected it over and over. I’d stroked Pig and looked through the Chief’s boxes.
“I have a signal,” J.Lo had said finally, next to the softly humming machine. “We are connected to the Gorg computer.”
So we’d tested it by making aspirin, and now I was standing in front of it, wondering how I got here.
“There are signals from many other teleclone booths. Gorg bases. Twelve bases in Arizona, more elsewheres.”
“I guess we should just try the closest one.”
“I should go,” J.Lo said. “I should be the one to test it. It is my fault if it fails.”
“If it fails,” I said, “you’re the only one who can possibly fix it. So I have to go.”
In my other hand was a pebble. If I managed to teleport anywhere without getting turned into milk shake I would send it back so J.Lo would know to follow with Pig.
“Okay…okay,” I said, shaking out my hands. “Okay.” I
was breathing hard and fast, probably hyperventilating. I was suddenly thinking that maybe I would just faint. Then I wouldn’t have to teleport. Nobody could expect you to teleport after you fainted, it was like an unwritten rule, it was fairly common knowledge that you were never asked to teleport after—
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Anything else you can tell me?”
“Hm. Well, it would be betters if you were chewing gum, your ears will probably pop—”
“AHHH!” I shouted, then ran for the cage, and crossed my fingers, and jumped.
There was a flash of light in my skull.
There was a loud snap.
My ears popped.
It was utterly dark. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even feel my own body. And I thought, Great—I died right when I was in the middle of something.
I couldn’t feel my body because the teleportation makes you numb for a bit but I wouldn’t know this until I started tingling all over a few seconds later, like I was carbonated. First I stretched my jaw to clear my ears, because I heard voices.
One of them was familiar. It had that TV announcer sound, but it was more of an off-camera, demanding-more-doughnuts-in-his-dressing-room sort of voice.
I remembered I had a flashlight, so I drew it out of my pocket and nervously switched it on against my hand. Through the red glow of my fingers I could see a curtain drawn in front of me. I edged around it. I was in a very small room. Past the curtain there was a mop and bucket. There was a dustpan. And there was a familiar dark wood door with a brass knob, confirming what I’d only just guessed.
I was in Daniel Landry’s broom closet.
Five minutes later I jumped back through the telecloner and saw the flash and heard the snap and landed, ears popping, back in the ghost town. I expected J.Lo to be right in front of me, and panicked when he wasn’t there.
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy—J.Lo! J.LO!” I turned. “How does this thing shut off…how does it—”
J.Lo’s head poked out the car window.
“We have to shut this down!” I shouted. “How does it turn off?”
“You are alive!” J.Lo sang.
“Focus, J.Lo! How do I shut it down?”
“What? Oh. Green thing!”
There was, thankfully, only one green thing, shaped like a racquetball on a golf tee. I grabbed at it, wondering if I was meant to squeeze or pull or push or what, but it instantly gave a gassy noise and deflated as the booth stopped humming. I sat back and breathed, my head no longer filled with visions of Gorg armies pouring into the moonlit street after me. Pig brushed against my legs. Then I noticed J.Lo at my shoulder.