“Where was the pebble?!” he shouted. “What about the pebble?”
I hadn’t thrown it back to tell him the booth worked. I’d been too busy eavesdropping, and I said so.
“I thought Tip was dead! Or in troubles! And I could do nothing! Nothing!”
“Why were you in the car?” I asked.
“I was about to leave. I was to try driving to find you.”
“Thanks.”
“But the booth, it worked? Why did you turn it off?”
“There were Gorg on the way. I thought they might teleport here.”
“Then they saw you?”
“No,” I said. “Listen. I got there, and it was all dark, and I could hear voices, right? And that’s when I knew I was in Dan Landry’s broom closet.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Get out of town.”
“It’s true!” I said. “And Landry was shouting at someone, shouting, ‘We had a deal!’ and ‘They were only questions, I wasn’t accusing you of anything!’”
“What questions?” asked J.Lo.
“Well, wait a second. It gets worse. Then a Gorg voice answers—”
J.Lo gasped.
“—then a Gorg voice answers, ‘THE FESTIVAL WILL PROCEED AT SUNRISE. THE HUMANS WILL BE COUNTED AND SORTED.’
“And Landry says, ‘She was just a kid. Kids get upset. Now you’ve kidnapped her?’ So the Gorg admits they screwed up and got Mom instead, but they still want me ’cause I fit the description of a girl who stole something from them.”
J.Lo muttered something in Boovish.
“But here’s the kicker,” I said. “The Gorg says, ‘WE WILL HONOR OUR PROMISE. YOU WILL HAVE YOUR POWER. WE WILL SEE YOU BECOME LEADER OF YOUR PLANET.’ And then some other Gorg chuckle, and he says, ‘WE WILL RELEASE THE MOTHER OF GRATUITUCCI AFTER THE FESTIVAL.’ And now the other Gorg are laughing, you know, because there isn’t going to be any ‘after the festival.’ That’s when I came back through the booth.”
J.Lo shook his head. “He was just wanting to be leader. He wanted to be the king of Earth and call it Danland.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Except, what about all that stuff he said to me about the Gorg leaving soon? What if he really believed that? Maybe he really thought by cooperating he could keep more people alive until the Gorg left on their own.”
“Or maybe he is just a poomp, pardon my language.”
“Maybe. Anyway, that wasn’t a Gorg base. But right before I teleported back, it sounded like the Gorg were going to use the broom closet to leave, and I was afraid they’d get here right behind me.”
“We will try another one, then,” said J.Lo.
“The next closest booth?”
“Hm. I am thinking, why not the strongest, instead of the closest. The strongest signal. This would more likelies be an important base.”
J.Lo tuned the booth, and we gathered our stuff. We each had enough aspirin to cover Mount Everest. J.Lo put up his helmet, and I still had mine. I had a backpack full of cat treats and my camera, and J.Lo had his toolbox, as usual.
“And looksee,” said J.Lo. “The talkie-walkies. I have fixed them up with power cells. Now we can talk and walk. J.Lo to Tip, J.Lo to—”
He was holding them no more than ten inches apart, so his gravely, squawking message got echoed back and forth and made the Worst Noise In The World. And I’ve heard Gorg sneeze.
I tried to put the walkie-talkie in my cargo pants. It made me feel like I had a peg leg, so I put it in my bag instead. The four-foot-long antenna stuck up through a gap in the zipper and bobbed as I moved.
“I can’t believe people used to run around with these while getting shot at,” I said, because I didn’t know what I’d be doing a half hour later.
J.Lo stared at the antenna. “You look cool.”
“I look like an RC car.”
“Yes. I do not know what that is.”
We gathered up Pig and stood before the teleclone booth. J.Lo fired it up again.
“Can we all go at once?” I asked. “Will we get mixed up?”
“I am sure we can alls go at once. Pretty sure.”
Nobody moved.
“Might be a lot of Gorg on the other side,” I said.
“Yes,” J.Lo said, and gave Pig a pat.
“I have enjoyed being your brother,” he added.
“It’s been nice having one.”
We walked into the booth—
—and out the other side. I was numb again, and Pig made a low noise. But it was bright enough here, and there were no Gorg in sight. There was nothing in sight but white tile and two rows of urinals. We were in a boys’ bathroom.
“Out of the booth,” said J.Lo. “I should shut it off. Gorg might come.”
As if in agreement, thudding footsteps echoed toward us. Around the corner of this hall of urinals came a Gorg with a rifle like an outboard motor with a car muffler sticking out of it.
“LU! F’GAB! GET AWAY FROM THAT!” Gorg bellowed.
We stepped forward and to the sides, crowding the urinals. Pig squirmed and hissed in my arms. J.Lo threw an aspirin, and then another, but the cold foam didn’t slow Gorg down much. He batted chunks of snow away and raised his rifle. Then he noticed Pig for the first time.
“RRRR. THAT IS…” he said, at a loss for words. “SURRENDER THE ANIMAL!”
He pointed his gun at my head.
“SURRENDER THE ANIMAL!”
“Okay,” I said faintly. “Sorry, Pig.”
And I threw her right at his stomach.
Pig screeched and dug her claws into Gorg as a cloud of hair rose off her back. Gorg looked down in horror and loosened one hand from his rifle to knock her away. I threw an aspirin at it, and kicked Gorg in the shin, which stubbed the hell out of my toes, pardon my language. It didn’t do a thing to the shin. But with his hand covered in foam, Gorg couldn’t hurt Pig, and she leaped away and hid behind the teleclone booth.
What happened next was the absolutely worst allergic reaction I’d ever seen. Gorg’s stomach turned red and formed fat bubbling hives like tomato soup. It spread up to his neck and head, and he went into spasms of gasping and sneezing. I think he even tried to fire his rifle, but his fat red fingers couldn’t work the trigger. I circled around him.
“Get the booth ready!” I said, and waited for J.Lo to give me the thumbs-up. Then I shoved Gorg as hard as I could, which wasn’t very hard, but an unlucky sneeze on Gorg’s part helped me force him into the cage, and pop! went the weasel.
“Where did you send him?” I asked.
“Whydaho, I think,” said J.Lo.
“Idaho.”
“Yes. This place,” he said, turning the booth off again. He consulted some kind of computer terminal on the side of this telecloner. On the top of it was a mass of rubbery-looking goop, and J.Lo poked and mashed it like he was working with clay. Shapes and symbols appeared in the air above the stuff, telling him what he wanted to know. I coaxed Pig out of hiding and gave her some treats.
“I will never do that again,” I told her. “Most likely.”
“This computer says there are other teleclone booths very close—within a squared mile, maybe. If I keep to looking, it might tell me where did they put Tipmom,” J.Lo said.
“Good. You do that, and keep Pig safe. I’m going to see where we are.”
“Be careful. Call on the talkie-walkie if you are in danger.”
I crept around the corner and found another hall of sinks and stalls, and the exit door. And next to that, a smaller exit door, like one was for adults and the other for kids. The small door was labeled “Mice” and the other one “Men,” and there’s only one place I know of that does that. It’s The Nicest Place on Earth.
“No way,” I whispered, stepping outside.
I saw the Vocabularcoaster and Rumpelstiltskin’s Spinning Wheel. Above were the twin tracks of the Duorail and the tops of thick-bearded palm trees. Right in front of me was the Castle of the Snow Queen.
/> I realized I was out in the open, so I slinked over to a line of shops and crouched in a doorway. At least it was nighttime.
“We’re in Happy Mouse Kingdom,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “We’re back in Orlando. Over.”
Shhhch “No way,” said J.Lo’s voice, as shrill and crackly as a drive-through menu. “Over.”
“It’s true! That big signal you found is Happy Mouse Kingdom. I’m looking at the castle right now. Over.”
Chh “This makes sense, actually. The Boov liked Florida. So then the Gorg push them out from Florida and set up base camp, to be poomps.”
And yet there were no Gorg to speak of—not around the castle, not down by the newsstand or by Chairman Moo’s Calfeteria. I ducked into the Calfeteria, wondering where you would keep a prisoner in a theme park. I didn’t even know what I should be looking for. Cages? Giant nets? Jars with holes poked in the lids?
It was then, far down Broadway, that I heard noises. I peeked around the edge of the Milk Bar and saw four Gorg exit another restroom, this time a ladies’ room, and walk my way. Another teleclone booth, I thought. Or maybe Gorg always go to the bathroom in groups.
I backed up and crawled behind the bar. The floors here were covered with sticky, black rubber mats that were rotten with the stink of spilled milk and feet.
The Gorg voices drew closer. They spoke to each other in their own language, which they punctuated with pokes and jabs at each other’s shoulders and ribs. I reached up and stopped the ticking of my walkie-talkie antenna against the dairy case.
They weren’t even going to notice me. There was no reason to, unless they came behind the bar looking for spoiled milk. But then a question that had been bubbling in the back of my mind suddenly came to the surface. Why would a group of Gorg teleport into that restroom down there, only to walk all the way up here?
Because they tried the booth J.Lo shut off and it didn’t work, stupid. Now they’re going to go find out why.
When they passed and were only feet from our restroom, I grabbed an empty milk bottle and hurled it across the street. It crashed and spread glass all over the floor of one of those stores that sells electric nose hair trimmers and solar-powered vacuum cleaners. The noise or the motion or both set off two Dancin’ Santas and a robot dog. The Gorg turned around and went to investigate where all that barking and Feliz Navidad was coming from.
I held the antenna still and sneaked back toward the men’s room, only to hear a screech come from my backpack like a tiny train wreck. The walkie-talkie. I froze, then scurried into a gift shop—one filled with the kind of gifts people only buy on vacation. Hiding behind a rack of Happy Mice wearing T-shirts that read “Official Souvenir,” I ripped the walkie-talkie out of my bag.
“What?” I hissed.
Shhhhkk “I did it!” the speaker shrieked.
“Not so loud,” I whispered, and peeked around the edge of the rack. “Did what?”
Chuuk “Tipmom! I found Tipmom! She is here!”
“Is she okay?”
Shckuk “I do not know.”
“Well, ask her,” I said, and tried to make myself small as I heard approaching footsteps.
Chhhrk “No no. She is in the computer! The Gorg did teleport her, but not alls the way. She is stored into the computer as datas!”
I groped around in my backpack and pulled out the camera.
“Ohmygosh. Can you get her out?”
Shhhsh “Yes! I will bring her here, safe as sounds!”
“Hold on.”
I slipped the walkie-talkie back into my bag and looked up from the floor at the circle of Gorg leaning over me.
“Hi,” I said. “Cheese.”
The camera in my hand flashed, and all four Gorg recoiled slightly as I threw about sixty aspirin straight up in the air like a referee. Half the Gorg recovered enough to try following me as I dove out between the others’ legs, then the falling aspirin burst on their backs, and I was lucky to catch the edge of the quickly expanding planet of snow that engulfed the store. The cold foam punched me like a big boxing glove into the street. A glance over my shoulder showed a snowball the size of a hot air balloon and getting larger, with bits and pieces of Gorg and cartoon mouse poking out here and there. But the snowball was already coming apart, and I dashed down the street, past J.Lo’s restroom, and fished the walkie-talkie out by its antenna again.
“Hello? J.Lo?”
Chhhk “Where did you go? What is happening?”
“Nothing. Stopped to take a picture. Is Mom there?”
Chuk “No—you said to—”
I missed the rest as I heard a rumble of feet and ran toward a familiar-looking trapdoor in the street. Guns went off behind me and tore the top off a churro stand. I wrenched open the door and threw myself down a ladder.
Shch “What was that?”
“Just a thing. Don’t bring Mom back until the explosions stop, okay?”
Chch “Yes.”
Fire rained down the ladder behind me.
“Good! As soon as you’re through, begin Operation: Catastrophe!”
The Gorg struggled to follow me down the hatch, but they were too big.
Chk “I thought we’d decided to call it Operation: Piggyback.”
“Can’t talk about it right now. Busy.”
I was sprinting down the dark hall as the Gorg fired, their flaming ammo slamming into the pavement above. I couldn’t see it, but they were making the hole bigger.
Shhhk “You nevers want to talk about my ideas. When is it J.Lo’s time?”
The hallway met up with another that I was sure would take me under the Snow Queen’s Castle. From there I could get to the English Puffins ride and surface again, just like J.Lo and I had before.
“I never agreed to Operation: Piggyback,” I said into the mouthpiece. “It’s stupid.”
Chh “You only do not understands it. You see, it has the word ‘back,’ like as ‘feedback loop.’ And it has the word ‘Pig’ as in ‘Pig.’”
Ahead was the orange outline of a door.
“If you have to explain the name,” I shouted to J.Lo, “then it’s not a good name! And please tell me you’re making cats while we’re talking about this!”
Chhh “Of course. Listen—I have learned something interesting from the computer.”
Just then I felt a tug against my ankle, and heard the clanking of cans and spoons.
“I am such an idiot,” I sighed.
Ssssk “Are you there?”
“Just a minute, J.Lo.”
The door didn’t burst open this time. I didn’t squirt a little kid with window cleaner. Instead I pushed the door open myself and peeked in. Twenty feet off stood the BOOB boys, half a castle hanging upside down behind them. They were aiming guns and looked terrified.
“Hold your fire!” said Curly.
I relaxed a little and rushed toward them.
“We all have to get out of here,” I said. “The Gorg—”
There was a noise like Bwak bwak, and I felt a stinging in my chest.
“Bleep, Alberto,” Curly groaned. “I said ‘hold your fire.’”
“He didn’t mean to,” said Christian. “Look—his hands are shaking.”
I looked down at my shirt and saw a wet red stain where I’d been hit.
“What…what did you do?” I said.
“Relax,” said Curly. “They’re only paint guns.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling dumb. Then I heard noises in the hall behind me.
“What the bleep is going on up there?”
“We gotta go,” I said. “The Gorg will be here in a second.”
This caused pandemonium. From the shouting it was obvious they weren’t even certain who the Gorg were, but it hardly mattered.
“Everyone shut up!” Curly shouted.
“What do we do?” said Yosuan.
The boys looked at Curly. Curly looked at Christian.
“The back way,” Christian said. “Single file. Go!”
/> We rushed through a far door. Christian was the last one out, and he shut off the lights and pulled two levers that started the castle turning.
“Paint guns?” I asked.
“It slows the big aliens down if you shoot them in the eyes,” Christian said. “You gave us the idea.”
I probably blushed. An orchestra of banging and roaring could be heard behind us. The Gorg were making their way through the spinning castle room.
“We need a teleclone booth,” I said as we entered a space hung with an upside-down candy mountain and bindle sticks.
“A what?”
“Oh…uh…it’s this cage-booth thing.”
“Oh, those. There’s one in the Motorama bathroom. Make this left, guys!”
“HALT, MONKEYS!” shouted a Gorg behind us, and comets came shooting after.
Ssch “Tip?”
I drew the walkie-talkie out of my bag again.
“Okay, quickly,” I said to J.Lo while passing an upside-down model of the solar system. “What did you learn from the computer?”
CHHshh “You were right! The Gorg did not perfect the complex cloning! There are mistakes!”
“Mistakes?” I said.
Up a ramping hallway, Christian told the other boys to dump all their paintballs behind us. I wouldn’t understand why until I heard the Gorg slip and fall on them a minute later.
Shh “Yes! Whento you clone—no, Pig, no biting—when you clone the complicated things, there are flaws. Errors. And if you clone a clone, it only gets worse. A clone of a clone of a clone, much worse.”
We reached the base of a ladder and the smallest boys started up first. And let me tell you, being chased by thousand-pound aliens with guns did not improve their climbing any.
Chh “All of the Gorg are now clones of clones, or clones of clones of clones. Some are even clones of clones of clones of clones! This is why they can get sick! And they cannot clone food too much, or it turns into poison!”
For a moment it seemed like Christian and I were going to have a contest to see who could be last to go up the ladder, until finally I just grabbed him by the arm and shoved him up.