My Teacher Flunked the Planet

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Duncan eagerly.

  When everyone looked at him he began to blush. I was surprised; I used to think nothing embarrassed Duncan.

  “Yes?” asked Kreeblim, her voice soft and encouraging.

  Duncan took a breath. He began rubbing the side of his nose, which my translator told me was a nervous gesture. “What if we told Susan’s parents that she just won some kind of travel scholarship?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Broxholm.

  Duncan shrugged. “Susan is always getting awards for being good at something. We could say she sent in an essay and won a trip to Washington, or something like that.”

  “Not bad,” said Kreeblim, closing her middle eye in approval.

  It didn’t take Broxholm and Kreeblim long to develop Duncan’s idea. The nice thing was, they welcomed suggestions from us kids as well. Working together, we decided that Susan had won the Patricia MacDonald Junior High Home Economics Travel Fellowship. Since “Betty Lou Karpou” was the junior high home economics teacher, Kreeblim could tell Susan’s parents that she had sponsored Susan in the contest and would accompany her on the trip.

  The question was, would Mr. and Mrs. Simmons believe it?

  I underestimated the aliens on that matter. After Kreeblim told the Simmonses that the real reason they were late was that they had just gotten this fabulous news about Susan’s scholarship, Broxholm and Kreeblim spent the next morning sending telegrams and making phone calls congratulating the Simmonses on their daughter’s achievement. “It is children like Susan who give us the hope of a better future—indeed, of any future at all,” said the absolutely truthful special-delivery letter the Simmonses received that afternoon.

  A similar letter went to Dr. Wilburn, the school principal.

  “She made such a fuss over me it was embarrassing!” cried Susan that evening.

  I thought, but didn’t say, that she ought to be used to it, since teachers had been making a fuss over her for years.

  “I had a harder time convincing Dr. Wilburn to give me the time off than I did with Susan’s parents,” growled Kreeblim, her nose lashing from side to side. “I finally had to agree to pay for my own substitute.”

  “Money’s not a problem for you guys, is it?” asked Duncan. He sounded concerned.

  Broxholm laughed, a sound like grinding metal. “Money is not the issue. Kreeblim likes to bargain. It’s a special skill among her people. She’s upset because she couldn’t get a better deal on this.”

  Kreeblim’s nose continued its angry movements. “I was working under a severe handicap. Teachers get almost no respect on this world.”

  “TRULY A SICK PLACE,” rumbled Big Julie.

  Broxholm wrinkled his brow in agreement. “That was one of the first things that struck me about this planet. I still can’t understand why the world’s most important job is treated so badly.”

  I looked at him in surprise. Did he really believe that teaching was the world’s most important job?

  That night Mr. and Mrs. Simmons and Dr. Wilburn drove Susan and “Betty Lou Karpou” to the airport in Hamilton, which was the nearest city to Kennituck Falls. The aliens hadn’t wanted to go to all that trouble. But they knew Susan’s parents would insist on seeing her off.

  What Mr. and Mrs. Simmons didn’t know was that after the plane landed, their daughter and her “teacher” would take a cab out of Washington, so they could join the alien who had tried to kidnap Susan last spring, and try to save the world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rumors of War

  “Come on,” said Broxholm later that night. “They’re about to land.”

  Duncan glanced at the clock on the wall. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said, shifting his poot from one shoulder to the other. “Planes are late a lot these days.”

  I smiled as Broxholm held out his URAT so Duncan could see the screen, which showed Kreeblim in her Betty Lou Karpou disguise. When Duncan’s poot saw Kreeblim/Karpou, it lifted its head—at least the portion it was using for its head at the moment—and cried, “Poot! Poot, poot, poot!”

  (Kreeblim’s own poot was in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator, which was where she kept it when she was away.)

  Kreeblim smiled, then mouthed the words, “Hello, Duncan.”

  Duncan blinked. “She can see me?”

  Broxholm wrinkled his brow yes. “We linked URATs before she left for the airport. She could even speak to you, if not for the fact that she doesn’t want to arouse suspicion.”

  “Easier than using a phone, I suppose,” muttered Duncan. He was trying not to seem too surprised by things—though how I knew that I wasn’t quite sure.

  “Anyway,” continued Broxholm, “Kreeblim says they will be landing soon. Therefore, we should leave.”

  We followed Broxholm to Kreeblim’s cellar. Like his own cellar, this had a secret trapdoor leading to a second cellar—an enormous, glowing, egg-shaped chamber where Kreeblim kept what most people would call her flying saucer. I don’t like that term; it sounds hokey. But if I described the vehicle to people—described the shape, the lights, the way it moved—they would just nod and say, “Oh, right! A flying saucer!” So I might as well call it that and get it over with.

  Our seats were in a bubble compartment that let us see our surroundings, though at the moment that meant nothing more than a curved, glowing wall.

  Broxholm touched a yellow half-sphere on the control panel, then spoke a word deep in his throat. The ship began to move forward. Duncan gasped as we lifted into the air. I figured he was afraid we were going to crash into the ceiling. I understood the feeling: I had felt it myself the night I went off with Broxholm. But there was no need to worry. Kreeblim’s backyard tilted up like a giant trapdoor and we shot safely into the night sky.

  Broxholm manipulated two of the control spheres. “This will shield us from radar detection,” he said.

  Minutes later we were flying over Washington, D.C., a trip that would have taken hours in a jet plane. We were so high that Washington and Baltimore were nothing more than smears of light across the land beneath us.

  “I thought you might like to see that,” said Broxholm, gesturing to the lights. He touched the control panel again. We shot forward, then began to fall almost straight down.

  Sometimes your brain knows things that your body doesn’t believe. For example, I was sure Broxholm was in control of the ship. But it was all I could do to keep from screaming when I saw the ground rushing toward us.

  Long before we would have hit, he began to slow our fall. Five minutes later we made a gentle landing in a deserted field.

  “How far are we from the city?” I asked as we climbed out of the saucer.

  “About sixty miles,” said Broxholm. He stretched out on the grass and began to gaze at the sky, which was clear and filled with stars.

  I lay down next to him. The stars seemed different to me now that I knew more of what was out there, knew that intelligent beings on ten thousand worlds were trying to decide what to do about us.

  After a while Broxholm made one of his nose-sighs. I wondered if he was missing his home.

  A light breeze whispered through my hair. Bugs were singing, and bats zipped through the darkness overhead. A light dew covered the grass. The dew was cool against my hands, which I had crossed behind my head. It was a good night. I thought: if I had ever been able to share a time like this with my father, would I have gone off with Broxholm? I turned to Broxholm and started to say something, but decided not to.

  After about forty-five minutes I heard a car in the distance. It came closer, stopped for a few minutes, then drove on. Broxholm glanced at his URAT. “That’s them.”

  Soon I saw Susan and Kreeblim walking across the field. “Poot!” cried Duncan’s poot, stretching a pair of eyestalks toward Kreeblim.

  A shooting star streaked through the sky above us.

  Kreeblim’s saucer was fast; less than twenty minutes after she and Susan joined
us we were in Arizona, where the five of us sat on the edge of a cliff, sharing peanut butter sandwiches, crisp apples, and some blobby things that Kreeblim called fimflits.

  My first bite of fimflits made my tongue think it had died and gone to heaven. When I asked about them, Kreeblim told me they were a kind of fungus people ate on her home planet.

  Then she told us what they grew on.

  “Eeuuw!” cried Duncan, spitting a mouthful of fimflit over the edge of the cliff.

  I don’t want to say ignorance is bliss, but clearly Duncan had been a lot happier before he knew the whole truth about fimflits.

  A moment later Kreeblim brushed her hands together, then slapped her cheek three times—a gesture that, on her world, meant it was time to get down to business.

  “I think we need to start with an overview,” she said, using her nose to pluck a fimflit crumb from her cheek.

  “An overview of what?” asked Susan. “This may sound stupid, but I’m still not sure exactly what we’re doing.”

  “An overview of the problem. We need to show you the reasons Earth has become such an issue throughout the galaxy before we can start to look for some hope that things can change.” Kreeblim hesitated, then added, “You’re going to see some things that aren’t pretty; things some adults would say are unsuitable for children to know about.”

  “An odd attitude,” said Broxholm, “since a lot of these ‘unsuitable’ things are happening to kids.”

  “You know, none of this is our fault,” said Susan. “We’re just kids. Why don’t you talk to someone in the government?”

  “We’ve considered it,” said Broxholm. “But most of our projections indicate that formal contact between the Planetary League and one or all of your governments would result in a major war here on Earth.”

  “You mean we’d end up fighting with each other?” I asked in surprise.

  “Correct,” said Kreeblim, swatting a mosquito with her nose.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” protested Duncan.

  Kreeblim made her version of a shrug. “How many of your other wars have made sense? Fear is a very powerful motivator among your people. It prompts them to do senseless things.

  That shut us up, until Duncan said, “I’ve got an idea! Why don’t you just fry everyone’s brains?”

  A silver lid flickered over Broxholm’s orange eyes—a sign of worried surprise. He looked at Kreeblim. Kreeblim looked back. When neither of them spoke, I sensed bad news coming.

  “Duncan,” said Kreeblim at last, “come with me. I need to talk to you.”

  Looking terrified, Duncan got to his feet and followed Kreeblim into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  What Goes On in the Human Heart?

  Broxholm, Susan, and I sat at the edge of the cliff, waiting for Duncan and Kreeblim to return. The star-spangled dome of the sky curved above us. After a while Susan said, “Is the brain-fry going to kill him?”

  “Of course not,” said Broxholm.

  I closed my eyes and said, “But it’s not going to last, is it? He’s going to get stupid again.”

  “Duncan was never stupid,” Broxholm replied sharply. “He thought he was stupid, so he acted that way. As near as I can make out, this is fairly common among your people. Somehow, without ever really intending to, your schools and families conspire to create that effect. It’s quite frightening.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “But the brain-fry is going to wear off, right?”

  Broxholm did one of those brow-wrinkles that mean yes among his people. “Duncan will go back to being what he was—with one difference. He will know, in a way no one else on your planet understands, what his brain is capable of.”

  “Is that good or bad?” asked Susan.

  Broxholm gave her a questioning look.

  “I mean, will it help him use his brain better, or just leave him feeling sad?”

  Before Broxholm could answer I heard a shout in the distance.”Noooooo! No, I don’t want that to happen!”

  The cry echoed through the darkness.

  I shivered and moved closer to Susan. I could see a tear running down her cheek.

  When Duncan and Kreeblim returned, Duncan was pale and trembling. I was amazed that I could feel so much sympathy for him after all he had done to me over the years. Yet the look on his face was so filled with loss that I almost started to cry myself.

  My brain has always been my proudest possession. So I should have had some understanding of how he felt. But I could hardly imagine what it would be like to think I was stupid all my life, suddenly gain an incredible ability to use my brain, and then be told I was going to lose that ability.

  I only knew that the idea wasn’t pretty.

  Neither was my awareness that I had been jealous of Duncan’s magnified brain power. I understood that when I realized that part of me felt happy he was going to lose it. I felt disgusted with myself for thinking that way.

  At first, no one knew what to say. Duncan was clutching his poot so tightly that bits of it oozed between his fingers. Kreeblim’s wormy hair lay as flat and still as if it had died. (My translator told me that was a sign of great sorrow.)

  “Well,” said Duncan at last. “We’re going to start with an overview of all the things wrong with this stupid planet. Then what do we do? Something equally amusing?”

  Kreeblim’s nose lashed sideways, a sign she was offended by Duncan’s tone. I guess she made allowance for his despair, though, because she spoke calmly. “Once we finish the overview, the real work begins. That’s when we start our search for a reason to hope things could be different.”

  “How do we do that?” Susan asked.

  “We meet people—talk to them, try to understand. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that we’ve been monitoring Earth’s television broadcasts for many years. Studying these shows first alerted us to the danger posed by your planet. However, some of us believe there must be more to your people than your television would indicate.”

  “Space beyond!” cried Broxholm, which seemed to be some sort of religious statement. “If we judged earthlings on the basis of what they’ve done with television, we’d just blow up the planet and have done with it. How they invented it when they did, I’ll never know. They certainly weren’t ready for it. How a culture can expose their young to such—such—”

  He was so upset he couldn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he made a gesture with no exact Earth equivalent. The closest translation my implant could provide was something like, “I spit in deep disgust upon your decision to play in your own garbage.”

  Only the last word wasn’t garbage.

  “Weren’t you already meeting people in our school?” asked Duncan after Broxholm had calmed down.

  “The study in your school was only a pilot project,” said Kreeblim, “a starting point.”

  “What made you pick our school to begin with?” I asked.

  “It’s so utterly typical of what people want to believe the schools in your country are like,” replied Broxholm in a tone of voice that made it clear he had a hard time believing people could be so stupid. “Also, it was an easy place for us to fit into; we had monitored so many television programs about schools just like it that we knew what to expect. We planned to move on to other research soon.”

  “What happened to that plan?” Susan asked.

  “You,” Broxholm replied sharply.

  “That’s not entirely fair, Broxholm,” said Kreeblim. Turning to Susan, she added, “But there is a grain of truth in it. You unmasked Broxholm at about the same time we gathered some alarming information regarding new advances in Earth’s science. This combination of events gave the faction pushing for Earth’s destruction powerful new arguments.”

  Susan turned pale.

  “I don’t get it,” said Duncan. “If you have such a great spy system, what do we need this mission for?”

  “Our monitoring and translation equipment picks up every bit of inform
ation your governments transmit,” Broxholm answered. “That’s easy. What we don’t understand is what goes on in the human heart. How can an intelligent species be at war against itself? That is the mystery we must solve, the riddle we hope to unravel before the council decides that Earth is too great a menace to be allowed to continue.”

  “And that is where you come in,” said Kreeblim. “Broxholm and I will get us into places—we’ll provide disguises, even make you invisible when necessary. But we need you to interpret things for us, to explain the earthling point of view. After all, your way of thinking is as alien to us as ours is to you.”

  “All we’re really looking for,” added Broxholm, “is hope; a reason to believe things aren’t as bad as they look. Or that they could get better. Maybe even just an explanation for how things got this way. If we can figure that out, perhaps we can find a cure.

  “But why us?” asked Duncan. “Couldn’t grownups tell you more about why things are the way they are?”

  Kreeblim flapped her nose no. “Few adults could approach this with clear vision. Once adults accept things as they are, most of them stop seeing how they could be different. You three stand at the edge of usefulness—old enough to serve as guides, young enough not to be blinded by familiarity.”

  She stood and began to walk toward the saucer. The rest of us followed her. Moments later we were flying over the Grand Canyon. I had never been there—my father and I had never taken a trip together that I could remember. I’d seen pictures of it, of course, but that’s not the same thing. Pictures can’t tell you what it feels like to be there.

  Kreeblim touched the control panel. The saucer stopped and hung in midair above the canyon. Its depth, its vastness looked both majestic and mysterious in the light of the full moon. For some reason it made me think of the strange vision I had experienced when I fainted in the council chamber.