Hoo-Lan arrived in a pair of brilliant red shorts covered with tropical flowers and purple butterflies. We took a seat in a quiet corner.
“So what’s up?” I asked.
Before he could answer, the alarm sounded, and we had to lie down on the floor while the ship made a leap across space.
“I wish they wouldn’t always do that when I’m getting ready to eat,” I groaned, when I was sitting at the table again.
“Someone did a study,” replied Hoo-Lan. “It showed that, for no apparent reason, most jumps are made when the greatest number of beings are sitting down to eat.” He punched a few buttons on the table, then looked up and added, “Sometimes the universe is just like that. By the way, did anyone tell you about the time component of the jumps?”
“Beg your pardon?” I asked, massaging my stomach and wondering if I would be able to eat or not.
“I take it that means ‘No,’ ” said Hoo-Lan. A plate floated up from the center of the table. In the center was a pile of something that looked like marinated eyeballs.
I decided to skip breakfast. “Yes, it means no. Tell me about the time aspect.”
“It’s pretty simple, really. One thing that happens when we make one of those leaps across space is that while it takes only a minute of our time, the time passage in the outside world is quite a bit longer.”
I wrinkled my brow. “I know that the faster we go, the slower time goes for us,” I said.
I had learned that from all my science fiction reading. I knew that if we approached the speed of light, time inside the ship would come to a virtual standstill. This meant that if we spent a century traveling at the speed of light, those of us inside the ship would age by only a tiny fraction of that amount of time. But I had a feeling Hoo-Lan was saying something different.
“We’re really not quite sure how it works,” he confessed, when I asked him about it. “We just know that we start a space leap at one point, come out at another a few seconds later, and in the so-called real world, a whole lot of time has gone by.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How much time has gone by since I came on board?”
Hoo-Lan popped one of the eyeball-looking things into his mouth and bit down on it. The squishy sound made me wish we had decided to meet in my room instead.
“Can’t say for sure,” he said. “I don’t always pay attention to that sort of thing. The ship travels at about half the speed of light most of the time. Between that and the space leaps we’ve taken, I’d guess that a month to a month and a half have gone by back on Earth.”
I sat back in my chair, feeling slightly boggled. I had left on the 24th of May. From my point of view, about three days had gone by. But Susan Simmons might have done six weeks of living since then. It was weird: I was three days older and Susan was six weeks older. I wondered what it would feel like to go home and find that she was a grown up and I was still a kid.
I didn’t care for the idea all that much.
I decided to change the subject. “What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked, looking at Hoo-Lan’s plate and wondering if I wanted to try one of the things he was eating. I figured they couldn’t possibly taste as bad as they looked.
Hoo-Lan poked at one of the things on his plate and a drop of green ooze came out.
I decided I didn’t want to try them after all.
“I have been asked to get your reaction to an idea proposed by one of the members of the council that you broke in on the other day.”
At first I was surprised that Hoo-Lan had heard about that incident. But if they had appointed him to be my tutor, I guess it made sense that they would keep him posted on what I was up to.
“What’s the request?” I asked.
Hoo-Lan looked terribly uncomfortable. “You know the Interplanetary Council is engaged in a bitter struggle regarding what we are going to do about your planet. They would like your permission to tap your mind for some additional information.”
“What do you mean, ‘tap my mind’?”
Hoo-Lan ordered the table to take away the rest of his food. “First, they’ll want to ask you a lot of questions. Then they’ll probably hypnotize you, so that you can tell us things about your past that you have forgotten.” He paused, then said, “Last of all, they’d like to do some brain work.”
“Brain work?” I asked nervously.
“They’re hoping if they dig around in there a bit, they may be able to find out what’s wrong with you.”
“What do you mean?” I yelped. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”
Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. I knew I was far from perfect. But I didn’t think I needed brain surgery to fix my minor defects—or even my major ones.
“I don’t mean you personally. I mean you earthlings. We’re wondering if the problem is organic.”
“What problem?” I asked, knowing full well what he was talking about.
“The general human problem,” said Hoo-Lan patiently. “Your race’s willingness to destroy your home, kill each other, let people starve—all that stuff.”
All that stuff indeed! Did they think they would find the reasons for all that in my brain?
Suddenly a horrible thought struck me: what if the reasons were in my brain?
I don’t mean just my brain. I mean every human brain. What if the problem is that there’s something wrong with the way we’re wired? Would that mean the mess we’ve made of things isn’t our fault? And if so, would that mean things were hopeless, that we could never fix the mess?
Or could the aliens do something about it? What if by looking inside my head, they could find a way to help us change? What if by examining my brain, they could learn how to help us stop wars forever?
Maybe it was no big deal. After all, CrocDoc had already done a little work on my head, and I had been able to get up and walk away from the table as if nothing had happened.
“Just how much digging do they want to do?” I asked.
“We’re talking a total cut and paste job,” said Hoo-Lan. “Most of the work would be done with light and magnets and atomic probes, of course. And our doctors are pretty good. But still, there’s no guarantee.”
I swallowed hard. “No guarantee of what?”
Hoo-Lan looked straight into my eyes. “No guarantee that you’ll ever be able to think again,” he whispered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dissected!
I stared at Hoo-Lan. A few minutes ago I was having a hard time trying to decide what to have for breakfast. Now I was supposed to decide if I was willing to risk my brain for the sake of the planet I had abandoned.
I sat without speaking for a long time. I thought about home and school. I wasn’t particularly eager to become a drooling moron for the sake of Duncan Dougal. But then I thought about the things I had seen on the news—kids in the Middle East getting blown up, potbellied babies starving in Africa, street kids in South America being killed just to get them out of the way.
“You don’t have to answer right away,” said Hoo-Lan. “And we won’t force you. You are one of us now.”
“Am I really?” I whispered.
It was true that I was one of them in that they had accepted me, taken me in. But had I really let go of Earth? Or did I have my heart in the stars—and my feet in Kennituck Falls?
Hoo-Lan said nothing.
I stared at the table, then turned away from him. There was so much yet to see, to do, to explore. I had found my way to the stars. I was the one—the kid from Earth who had made it out into the galaxy. And now I was being asked to risk it all for the crazies I had left behind.
I rubbed the spot on my arm where Duncan used to punch me when he had had a bad night at home.
I thought of those kids in Africa.
“When do we start?” I whispered.
Broxholm came to see me later that day. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.
“Do you think I shouldn’t?” I asked.
 
; He tugged on his nose. “I’m just worried about you,” he said.
“I’m worried, too,” I replied. “But hey, one reason I left Earth was that I figured no one would miss me. So what difference does it make?”
Broxholm looked at me for a moment. “I believe you overheard that we have a communications problem. My early departure from Earth left our other agent in Kennituck Falls without some essential equipment. So I cannot prove anything to you. But I believe that if I could show you the people back there, you would find some that miss you very much. Susan Simmons, for example.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t like to talk about how I felt about Susan.
Our conversation was interrupted when Hoo-Lan stepped through the wall. He was wearing green shorts covered with hummingbirds.
“They’re ready for you, Krepta,” he said.
I touched foreheads with Broxholm, which is his planet’s way of saying farewell with honor, and followed Hoo-Lan through the transcendental elevator to the operating room.
CrocDoc was waiting for us.
“Pleased to see you again, Krepta,” he said soberly. His red jaws were drawn back in something that looked like a grin, but wasn’t.
I nodded to him, and he made a gesture which translated into, “I salute your sinus cavities”—something I’m sure had more meaning for him than it did for me.
Having brain surgery on the New Jersey is not the same as having it on Earth. I wasn’t scrubbed and put into a hospital gown. I almost wish I had been; some kind of ritual might have made me feel better, or helped me take it more seriously. Maybe it was just my fear that made me feel disconnected, as if I were moving through a dream of some kind.
Anyway, CrocDoc had me lay down on a table, told me the operation was being monitored by several dozen other doctors from a wealth of worlds, and then pricked me in the ear with something that immediately knocked me unconscious.
For a while, the sense of being in a dream increased. I felt like I was surrounded by mists, and trying to swim in molasses.
Voices seemed to whisper around me. Faces floated into my consciousness, some familiar, some totally unknown to me. Sometimes the familiar and the unfamiliar merged, or a face I had known all my life would stretch and pull into a strange new shape.
I saw Susan, Duncan, and Ms. Schwartz, and most of the other kids from school. If I could have thought about it, which I couldn’t, I might have wondered if CrocDoc was touching nerves in my brain that were setting off specific memories—somehow tickling the areas where those images were stored.
I saw my father. He was crying.
I saw Duncan again. He was frightened. I tried to cry out, because I was sure that something had happened to him. Only I couldn’t, of course, since I was sound asleep, with the top of my head off.
Then I saw a man, a tall man wearing a suit. He was sitting at a desk in what looked like a typical classroom. It was dark, as if he had been working late and never bothered to turn on the lights.
As far as I could tell, I had never seen him before.
In my vision, the man’s face began to twist with emotion; I couldn’t tell what emotion it was—it could have been fear, or anger, or sorrow, maybe some odd combination of all three. It was so intense, it was hard to label. But whatever it was, it slowly twisted his face until suddenly he shoved the desk forward so violently that it fell over, scattering the stuff on top all across the floor.
Standing, he strode across the room until he was facing the television set that sat on the far counter. His features still twisted with that unnameable emotion, he reached up and began to peel off his face.
The skin beneath the mask was blue. As he slowly pulled it upward, he revealed a huge white mustache, a comic nose, enormous eyes.
It was Hoo-Lan!
Trembling now, he raised his hand. The skin of the hand looked human, as if he was wearing a mask over that, too. But it began to glow, gently at first, then brighter and more intensely. As a howl that sounded like some unholy combination of pain and anger tore out of Hoo-Lan, a bolt of power surged from his fingertips and blasted the television set to pieces.
Then everything went black.
I wondered if I was dead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brains in a Bottle
When I woke up, Hoo-Lan was staring at me anxiously.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?” I asked, still feeling groggy.
“You were inside my head. I could feel it. I want to know how you did it.”
I blinked. “I didn’t even know I did did it,” I mumbled, too confused to remember the dream I had had while I was unconscious.
I did notice that my words were slurred and slow. Was I all right? I couldn’t tell.
“Peter, talk to me!” said Hoo-Lan urgently.
“Let the boy be,” ordered CrocDoc. “He’s been through a lot.”
“Am I—did you—how did it go?” I asked, finally getting the words right.
“It’s hard to say,” replied CrocDoc, looking at me with his huge eyes. “We have to run an intense analysis on the data I uncovered. I did manage to get this,” he said proudly, holding up a clear container.
Inside the container was a brain.
“My brain!” I screamed. “You took out my brain!”
I tried to grab for my head, but my hands were tied down.
“Well yes, but just for a while,” said CrocDoc. “I’m going to put it back when I’m done.”
I had tried to jump off the table when I first saw the bottle with my brain in it. That failed completely—either because I was tied down, or simply had no control over my muscles at the moment. Just as well, since it wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to go running around without any brains. (Although I knew a lot of people back on Earth who did it all the time.)
I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. I took a lot of deep breaths before it did any good.
“How come I can see?” I whispered, when I thought I had some control over myself.
“Oh, your brain is still hooked into your head,” said CrocDoc. Holding up the bottle again, he gestured to the bottom of it. “See all these wires? They run into your skull, providing nerve attachments. I’ll unplug them whenever we’re going to do some work that might be uncomfortable for you. But in the meantime, you can finally join us here in the world of the waking.”
“Finally?” I murmured. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“About ten days, Earth time,” said Hoo-Lan.
“More than a week!” I cried. “They haven’t done anything to Earth yet, have they?”
“No, no. All action is postponed pending analysis of your brain.”
Typical of my life. In most of the stories I’ve read, the fate of the world is in the hero’s hands. In my case, the fate of the world was somewhere in my brains—maybe in my temporal lobes, or my corpus callosum, or my medulla oblongata. Wherever they finally found what they were looking for. Or didn’t find it, since there was no guarantee that the answer was in my brain. Just a possibility.
A buzzer sounded from the ceiling. CrocDoc pushed a button. “What is it?” he asked.
“May we come in?”
I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t be certain, since I was still feeling kind of groggy. Would I ever feel alert again? Or was I doomed to a life of permanent mental fuzz?
The worst thing was, in my current condition, I didn’t really care. I couldn’t even make myself care. I wondered vaguely if this was what it was like to be hooked on drugs.
“Do you feel like having visitors?” asked CrocDoc.
“Why not?” I said, though to tell you the truth, I really didn’t care all that much at this point.
At once, Fleef and Gurk stepped through the wall.
“Oh, my,” said Fleef, when she saw me strapped to the table, with my brain sitting on the counter next to me. Her face turned a deeper shade of orange, and the sphere on the stalk on her skul
l went “Neep! Neep!”
“How are you, Krepta?” asked Gurk. His big eyes seemed filled with worry.
“Okay, sort of,” I said.
“We’ve been worried about you,” said Fleef. “Everyone is very impressed with how brave you are.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to blow up Earth anymore?” I whispered.
“It means I hope we don’t have to,” replied Fleef, squeezing my hand.
I was disappointed. On the other hand, I suppose my being a good guy about all this didn’t really reduce the possible menace of my planet. I sighed.
“We brought you something,” said Gurk, trying to sound cheerful. He held up a bag. “Do you want to see?”
I tried to nod, but couldn’t, because my head was strapped down. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s see.”
He reached into the bag and pulled out a blob of fur.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a skimml,” said Fleef. She sounded very pleased.
Gurk held the thing in front of my face. It was about six inches across, round and red—which made it look something like a big furry ladybug. After a moment two stalks rose out of the fur. The eyes on the end of them looked at me and blinked.
“They’re squishy.” said Gurk. “And almost indestructible. See?”
With that, he squeezed the skimml’s middle, which caused it to bulge out of the top and bottom of his hand.
“Lots of fur, no bones,” said Fleef.
Gurk set the skimml on my stomach. It walked up and took another look at my face, walked back to my stomach, turned around three times, and settled down with a sigh. After a moment it began to make a noise something like a window fan.
“It likes you!” cried Fleef happily.
I named the skimml Murgatroyd. It kept me company through the following days as CrocDoc turned my brain on and off while he examined it. I had a lot of visitors. They all seemed to like to squeeze the skimml.