Bruce Coville - 6th Grade Alien 12, page 1
FAREWELL TO EARTH
Illustrated by Tony Sansevero
A
Minstrel
®
book
Published by POCKET BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore
CHAPTER
1
[PLESKIT]
A Letter Home
FROM: Pleskit Meenom, on the soon-to-be-distant Planet Earth
TO: Maktel Geebrit, on my beloved home planet, Hevi-Hevi
Dear Maktel:
This will be the last letter I send you from Earth. Things here have taken a shocking turn, and I wanted to let you know about them as soon as possible.
Actually, I am certain you have already heard something about the recent events, whether on the Interplanetary News or from your Motherly One. But I wanted to give you the inside story. It seemed only fair, since you’re going to have to deal with the results yourself before long!
I hope you won’t be too upset.
Fremmix Bleeblom!
Your pal,
Pleskit
CHAPTER
2
[PLESKIT]
A Bitter End
When Chris Mellblom walked right past me in the lunchroom without even saying hello, I knew something was wrong. From the very beginning of my stay on Earth, Chris had been one of the kids most willing to be friendly with a purple alien from the planet Hevi-Hevi.
Most willing of all, of course, had been my good friend Tim Tompkins. He and Rafaella Cruz were sitting next to me when Chris walked past.
“What was that all about?” asked Rafaella, looking surprised. “Chris is usually a lot nicer than that.”
“I do not know,” I said, emitting the quiet fart of minor sorrow. Its odor is subtle, and Tim and Rafaella did not even notice it.
“Maybe he’s got end-of-the-year jitters,” said Tim, ducking a paper airplane thrown at him by Jordan Lynch. “After all, we’ve got some major tests coming up.”
This sentence would turn out to be more true than Tim realized—though the tests we were about to face were not the ones that could have been expected.
“If it was only Chris acting strange, I might agree,” I said, shouting to be heard above the cafeteria hubbub. “But he is the third kid to snub me like that today.” I sighed. “I am aware that all things must come to an end, but I was hoping sixth grade would have a better ending than this.”
“Well, you couldn’t ask for better weather!” said Rafaella, trying to be cheerful.
In this regard she was right. Earthlings divide their year into units loosely related to the action of their single, rather small moon. We were currently in the unit called “June,” and the sunshine and cool breezes were most pleasant. In less than two weeks the school year would be over.
Personally, I took small comfort in the lovely weather and the approaching vacation—especially when the next day even more kids began avoiding me or acting uncomfortable in my presence.
“This is definitely weird,” said Tim when we went outside for what our teacher, Ms. Weintraub, calls “The Daily Runaround.” (She calls it this because she says we are too old for “playtime.” I am glad she does not think we are also too old to need the free time the runaround offers us.) “I tried asking Chris what was up, but he wouldn’t say.”
“Neither would Michael or Misty,” said Rafaella, referring to two other classmates who had refused to talk to me that day.
“You don’t suppose this is about Dolores, do you?” asked Tim.
Dolores used to be one of our class hamsters, until she mutated (for reasons that were only partly my fault) into an intelligent but evil hamsteroid. “Five inches tall and dangerous as a rattlesnake,” is how my bodyguard, Robert McNally, liked to describe her. The reason Dolores was still on everyone’s minds was that, as far as we knew, she was living inside the walls of the school, which made us all a bit nervous.
The school authorities had tried to catch her, of course, but setting traps for Dolores was a little tricky, since she tended to do something even worse in response. The last trap they had put out for her ended up on the chair of our principal, Mr. Grand, causing a very painful accident to his bottom parts.
As I’ve said, Dolores was not merely intelligent, she was dangerous.
Even so, I didn’t think she could be the root of the current problem.
Neither did Tim. “I don’t see why the kids would be any more upset about Dolores now than they were last week, or the week before,” he said.
Rafaella shrugged. “Sometimes these things build up in people’s minds.”
As it turned out, whatever was building up, it rasn’t just in the minds of my classmates. When I left school that day, I saw something I hadn’t seen since the early days of my visit to this planet: a group of protesters waving signs with angry slogans such as “Alien Go Home!” and “Earth Doesn’t Need Purple People!”
It was only a small group, and they were being held on the far side of the street by a line of police officers. Even so, it was distressing. I mean, can you imagine what it’s like to know there are people you’ve never even met who dislike you so much they want to throw you off their planet?
“Geez Louise, I thought we were done with this nonsense,” said McNally. (That’s what he prefers to be called. No “Mr.” No first name. “Just McNally,” he always says—which has led Shhh-foop, our Queen of the Kitchen, to think “Just McNally” is his name.)
Someone shouted a rude remark.
McNally shook his head in one of those Earthling gestures I find so interesting, then opened the door of the long black limousine we use to travel back and forth from the embassy.
The limo is heavily shielded against attack. I found this idea shocking when we first moved here. However, as time went on I became increasingly glad to have this protection.
Ralph-the-Driver nodded as we took our places. He didn’t say anything. He never did.
Suddenly one of the Earthling vegetables called a “tomato” splattered against the window.
A cheer broke out from the mob. The police began shouting and pushing them back.
“Drive!” ordered McNally.
Ralph nodded, and the limo moved swiftly away from the school.
Behind us I could hear the angry shouts of the mob.
Clearly, something very bad was going on.
But what was it?
CHAPTER
3
[TIM]
Sludged!
Rafaella and I watched in disgust as people shouted and shook their fists at the departing
All right, that’s it,” I said. “Something very weird is going on, and it’s time we figured out what it is.”
“Got any suggestions?” Rafaella asked. “It’s not like the kids in class who are upset are willing to say anything. In fact, they act kind of scared.”
I thought about that for a minute. “It’s not just the kids in class. Whatever’s going on, it’s clear a bunch of people know about it. Otherwise we wouldn’t have this mob outside school.”
“But it’s not something that’s been on the news,” continued Rafaella slowly, “because if it was, we’d know about it, too.”
“So it’s some kind of rumor,” I said.
“And the best place to check out a rumor …” said Rafaella.
“Is the Internet!” I smiled. “I think it’s time we did some Net-surfing.”
“Want to come to my house?” Rafaella asked.
I can’t explain the feeling that hit my stomach at that moment. It was a strange mix of excitement and panic, horror and delight.
Rafaella is always nice to me, so I don’t know why I feel so weird around her sometimes.
I figured the reason she invited me over was that she knows I don’t have a computer of my own. I don’t mean I don’t have one in my room. I mean we don’t even have one in the house. Mom claims we can’t afford one. This is driving me nuts, since I think I’m the only kid in our class who doesn’t have one at home.
Mom does not believe that. She can be very out of touch with reality sometimes.
I realized Rafaella was waiting for an answer.
“Let’s go to the library,” I said. “That way we can both get on computers and run two searches at once.”
We’re lucky. The library near us has a good computer system—though it almost got a lot less useful last year when a bunch of people tried to shut down Internet usage because they were afraid kids would see dirty pictures or something.
You’d think with kids starving to death in Africa and stuff like that, they would have more important things to worry about.
Once we got to the library, I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to run my search. Just going for “aliens” would obviously turn up more hits than I could sift through.
I tried “alien rumors” and got about fifty matches that were all the same, for some stupid comic book.
I hate it when people do that.
I tried “alien abductions” with no better results. Just as I was starting to get frustrated, Rafaella said, “I think I’ve found something!”
“What?”
“Come here and take a look.”
I went to stand behind her. “Oh, geez,” I muttered.
She had pulled up “The Sludge Report,” an all-news/all-gossip website run by this guy named Mort Sludge who is rabidly anti-alien. At the end of May he had also started a radio show. I’d heard it a couple of times when I was in the car with Mom. Even the guy’s voice gave me the creeps.
He had posted a new item that day, under the category “Alien Treachery?”
Reading the article made me want to vomit.
Even so, we printed it out, since we thought we might need it.
Here it is
: What Happened to
Linnsy Vanderhof ?
That’s the question being asked by parents whose children attend the school in Syracuse, NY, where Pleskit Meenom, Earth’s only purple sixth grader, was forcibly installed by government authorities earlier this year.
According to inside reports obtained by this source, the school has suffered one disaster after another since Pleskit’s arrival. The most troubling situation occurred after Pletkit and two of his classmates, Tim Tompkins and Linnsy Vanderhof, disappeared for about two months. Though Tompkins and Pleskit eventually returned, young Linnsy was not with them.
Recently rumors have begun spreading in the anti-alien underground that she has been abducted—or worse—by hostile aliens.
Despite repeated inquiries from this
reporter, the school has refused all comment. Vanderhof’s parents were not available. Some sources are whispering that the aliens have bought their silence.
So much for parental devotion.
The big question, of course, is: What has happened to an innocent sixth grade girl who fell into the hands of these evil invaders?
This story is set to break nationally sometime in the next week. Fears that the whole purpose of the Hevi-Hevian mission is to kidnap Earth women are continuing to build in the anti-alien movement.
Developing …
CHAPTER
4
[PLESKIT]
Visitor
I thought we were finished with protesters when we left the school. But as we drove up to the Hevi-Hevian embassy—which is also my home—I saw that demonstrators had gathered here as well.
“Is no place safe from this kind of thing?” I asked.
” ‘Fraid not,” said McNally with a sigh.
The embassy is situated in a lovely green area called Thorncraft Park, which is quite peaceful when there are no demonstrations going on. The building itself dangles from a two-hundred-foot-tall metal hook that we inserted into the top of the hill. According to Tim, it looks like a flying saucer captured and put on display.
Guests who approach on foot (or by bicycle, as Tim often does) enter the embassy through a transport capsule housed in a small guardshack about fifty yards from the base of the hook. Those coming by car—mostly kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and so on—enter through an underground garage. When an approved vehicle (such as the limo) gets close, a door opens in the side of the hill and we drive in, going down a long ramp to a garage located deep underground.
The garage has space for several cars besides the limo, plus a workbench for Ralph, and a small room with big windows that is both his office and resting place. The windows seem pretty useless, since the only thing he can see through them is the inside of the garage. I suspect they are there so he won’t feel too cooped up.
When we approached home this afternoon, I saw something that was both exciting and frightening. Docked underneath the huge disk of the embassy was a small spaceship. We do not get visitors from off-planet terribly often. When we do, it usually portends something big happening.
McNally and I rode the glass elevator up the hook, leaving Ralph in the garage to do … well, whatever Ralphlike things he does when he’s not driving the limo. As usual, we went to the kitchen for a snack. Barvgis, the Fatherly One’s slimeball assistant, was there already.
Earthlings tend to use the word “slimeball” for someone who is very nasty. This is not so for Barvgis. He is one of the nicest beings I have ever met. It is just that he is quite round, and quite slimy. It was not surprising to find him in the kitchen; it is his favorite place in the embassy.
Most of the rest of the embassy family was there, too, which was not so typical. Actually, except for the Grandfatherly One, whose brain (which is all we have left of him) was sitting at one end of the table in its portable transport device, they’re not truly family. But when you are one of only a handful of off-worlders on a strange new planet, you tend to become very close to the people you live with.
Still, the fact that so many of them were here now, combined with the spaceship docked beneath the embassy, indicated that something was up.
Before I could figure out the best way to ask what was going on, Shhh-foop came sliding over to the table. She held a steaming pot in four of the orange tentacles that grow from the top of her head. Another tentacle clutched a clear purple mug. “Some coffee for the handsome Just McNally?” she warbled.
A flicker of terror twitched across McNally’s face. He is a brave man, as he has proved many times, but Shhh-foop’s attempts to make this Earthly beverage have not been entirely successful. However, my bodyguard is as kind as he is brave, so he smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll give it a try, Shhh-foop.”
Our Queen of the Kitchen hummed happily to herself as she poured the fragrant black liquid into the mug. Turning to me, she sang, “And how about you, my little Pleskit-pie? Would you like a snack? Some febril-gnurxis? A plate of finnikle-pokta? I made some just for you.”
Usually I have febril-gnurxis after school; I love its crunchy sweetness. But Shhh-foop doesn’t make finnikle-pokta that often, and the way the brightly colored nuggets jump around when you try to eat them amuses me. So I asked for those instead.
The Fatherly One’s secretary, Beezle Whompis, had flickered out of sight. Because he is an energy being, it is not easy for him to hold a physical shape, and he really only does it as a courtesy to the rest of us. Now he crackled back into sight. His lean, blue face and deep-set eyes give him a serious, almost tragic look. Even so, I thought I saw a hint of mischief in those eyes as he said, “Aren’t you going to try your coffee, McNally?”
“I’m waiting for it to cool down a bit,” said McNally, giving him a cranky look.
Wakkam Akkim, the short, birdlike being who is the Fatherly One’s spiritual massage master, warbled a few notes—her way of saying, “Now, boys, let’s not fight.”
Shhh-foop slid back to the table with my finnikle-pokta. They were squeaking and rolling all over the plate, which had a kind of fence around it to keep them from escaping.
“Yikes!” cried Ronald the mutant hamster, who was sitting in a little chair set on the end of the table. Like the evil Dolores, Ronald used to live in a cage in our classroom. But unlike Dolores, Ronald had asked to come stay with us after his mutation. He seems to be getting comfortable with his new home, but he is still occasionally startled by Shhh-foop’s cooking.
Our Queen of the Kitchen placed the lively little snacks in front of me, then turned and sang eagerly, “How is the nectar of the caffeine bean, Just McNally?”
McNally sighed and lifted the steaming cup to his lips.
He took a sip.
He closed his eyes.
Shhh-foop watched anxiously, twisting her tentacles together as if her entire happiness depended on his approval.
McNally opened his mouth to speak—but no words came out. His eyes widened in surprise.
He tried again.
Nothing.
“Ai-yi-yi-yikkle-demonga!” wailed Shhh-foop operatically. “I have muted McNally!”
McNally pushed away from the table and stood up. He was pointing at his throat and waving his hands.
“What did you put in that stuff, Shhh-foop?” asked the Grandfatherly One.
“I added a pinch of floogrot from Ploodangi,” she sang, tears dripping from the ends of her tentacles. “I thought it might make the coffee more tasty for the handsome Just McNally.”
Just then the Fatherly One came into the kitchen. It was moderately surprising to see him, since he does not often join us. Even more surprising was the tall, orange-skinned being Standing next to him: Sookutan Krimble, relative/mentor of the little pest Beebo who had caused Tim and me so much trouble in the past. At least now I knew who owned the small ship we had seen docked under the embassy.
