Lunch Swap Disaster

by Bruce Coville

  I scrambled under the counter and pressed myself against the wall. My heart was pounding so hard that I was afraid the aliens would hear it! I just hoped none of them had supersensitive ears!

  Even from my hiding place, I could tell that the three beings who entered the office with Meenom were aliens. If their feet hadn’t made it clear, their language would have. Cold with fear, I huddled even more tightly against the wall, praying that I wouldn’t be discovered.

  “Geedrill peedris fli-danji!” said one of the aliens in a voice that did not sound at all friendly.

  Meenom burped loudly in response, then made a series of knuckle cracks. An odor that reminded me of a hamster cage that had gone too long without being changed filled the room. Only my terror at being discovered kept me from gagging out loud. I cupped my hand over my nose and tried to breathe shallowly. That helped, but not much.

  A frenzied conversation erupted among the aliens—a virtual symphony of words, farts, belches, and knuckle cracks, accompanied by a series of smells so rich and varied that they made my head spin and my nostrils dizzy, which was not something I would have thought was possible.

  What were the aliens talking about? And how angry would they be if they discovered I was listening?

  Not that I’ve understood a single fart of it, I thought, wishing I had some idea—any idea—of what was going on.

  A final burst of words and smells, and then the room fell silent, if not odor-free. To my horror, I saw Meenom’s feet heading in my direction. He stopped in front of the shelf under which I was hiding. Speaking softly now, the ambassador picked up something and began to putter with it. As he did, he moved one foot forward.

  It nudged against me.

  I held my breath.

  Meenom dropped the object he had been holding—on purpose, I suspected. Then he bent to pick it up, which brought him face-to-face with me.

  I cringed as I saw Meenom’s eyes widen in shock and anger. I had pushed myself as far back against the wall as I could, trying to merge myself into it. Now Meenom’s purple face and dark eyes seemed to pin me to that spot.

  Unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, I mouthed a single word: “Sorry!”

  To my astonishment, Meenom stood without speaking.

  A moment later, the aliens broke into another babble of conversation.

  Feeling slightly less terrified, and driven by curiosity, I slid closer to the edge of my hiding place and peered out.

  One of the aliens was clearly from Hevi-Hevi.

  Another was tall and slender, with scaly orange skin. This being, whose back was toward me, wore little save a shiny brown shift and a pair of brown shoes that fit so tightly, they looked as if they had been painted on. I looked again and realized I could not tell if they really were shoes, or actually the being’s feet. The third alien, who appeared to be female, had an insect-like quality to her features, especially her large, multifaceted eyes. She was waving her four arms and speaking in an angry, buzzing voice.

  Meenom had his hands up and was humming a single, soft note, as if trying to calm her. A tangy-sweet odor, something like grapefruit, drifted from his sphen-gnut-ksher.

  The conversation continued for another four or five minutes, with the insect woman buzzing angrily, Meenom and the other Hevi-Hevian both trying to calm her, and the tall orange being occasionally adding a comment—which it seemed to do mostly by slapping out a rhythm on its skinny, scaly body.

  A final, angry buzz from the insect woman was followed by a moment of silence. Then Meenom spoke, mingling words and gaseous eruptions in an oddly musical way. The insect woman buzzed two or three times during his reply, but other than that did not interrupt. When he was done, she lowered her head and flicked out her tongue, which was about three feet long and bright blue. It wrapped around Meenom’s wrist, then seemed to pull his hand and her head together. They stood that way for a moment. Then the insect woman withdrew her tongue, shook her head sadly, turned, and left the room. The tall orange alien followed. The third alien—the one from Hevi-Hevi—belched twice, emitted a smell that reminded me of root beer, patted Meenom on the shoulder, and turned to follow the others.

  Meenom watched them go without speaking.

  After they were gone, he belched a command. The door to the room slid shut. He turned to where I was hiding and said sternly, “You can come out now, Tim.”

  Trying not to tremble, I crawled from beneath the shelf.

  “What were you doing down there?” demanded Meenom.

  I swallowed nervously. “Pleskit and I were waiting to talk to you. He left for a minute to… to do something. When I heard you coming, I freaked out and—”

  Meenom raised a hand to stop me. “ ‘Freaked out’?”

  “Had a brain spasm,” I said. “I thought you might get angry if you found me here by myself, so I hid. I suppose it was stupid, but I was really scared.”

  Meenom nodded. “I think I understand. My visitors, however, might not have. Having an Earthling here would have been… problematic for me. And for your planet. It does look a good deal like spying, you know.”

  “I’m just a kid!” I said desperately.

  “Do you think children have never been used as spies?” asked Meenom, sounding surprised.

  “I suppose they have been,” I said. Then, feeling a need to get everything out, I added, “I did overhear the conversation. But you were all speaking in alien languages. So it’s not like I learned anything.”

  Meenom laughed. “A good point—though if you were working for one of my enemies, you could still have recorded the conversation to sell later.”

  “I wouldn’t do something like that!” I cried. “I like you guys. Pleskit is my friend. I would never—”

  “Peace, peace,” said Meenom, holding out his hands. “I didn’t say you did. I just pointed out the possibility.” He burped twice and cracked his knuckles. The command pod drifted down to the floor. He stepped into it. “I am well aware that you have been a good, if not always wise, companion for Pleskit.”

  “I like him,” I said. This answer had the double virtue of being true and seeming like a safe thing to say.

  “He likes you as well, Tim. In fact, I am a bit envious of the friendship my childling shares with you. I do not have such an Earthling connection—nor am I likely to for some time. My work here is too serious, and too complicated, for me to make myself vulnerable in such a way. Yet such connections are, in the long run, one of the primary pleasures of the work. So it is a relief to speak with an Earthling who does not have a complaint or an economic interest to push.” He paused, then said, “Tell me, how do you think Pleskit is adjusting?”

  Startled by the question—by the way Meenom was speaking to me—I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Good, I guess,” I said at last. “Probably quite a bit better than I would, now that I think about it.”

  The discussion had made me remember my first experience at summer camp two years earlier, and the desperate homesickness that had gripped me for the first few days. That had been in a place where the land, the sky, the trees, the air, the very beings around me were, if not what I saw every day, at least familiar and safe. As if a curtain had been pulled back, I suddenly had a new sense of what it was like for Pleskit to be here in this totally new place, where nothing was like what he was used to, where everyone he went to school with was of a completely different species. I blinked, stunned by this sudden vision of what my friend had been going through. Looking at Meenom more closely, I asked, “Does he talk about it much?”

  “Not as much as I would like. On the other hand, I am not available to him as much as I would like to be. Things right now are… difficult.”

  Feeling bold, and thinking I might never have another chance, I said, “Were those beings that were just here giving you trouble?”

  Meenom emitted a smell that reminded me of overripe bananas. “They were messengers of trouble.”

  “Do you have a lot of alien visitors?”

&nbs
p; “I prefer the term ‘off-worlders,’ ” said Meenom gently. “It’s a little less harsh.”

  “Sorry.”

  Meenom burped reassuringly. “You don’t know unless I tell you. And no, we have not had many off-world visitors. Earth is not on any of the major interplanetary lanes, so ships do not pass nearby very often. The beings who were just here came out of their way to express their concerns.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “There are great forces moving, Tim. I am in a constant state of fret. I must be wise and wary if I am to protect your planet.”

  “Protect us?”

  Meenom looked startled. “Forgive me. I have spoken more freely than I should. It is not right to burden you with my concerns. Let us stay with Pleskit. This last… episode… of his has created new problems with the Trading Federation.”

  “But it wasn’t really his fault,” I said, wondering if Meenom had even heard about today’s problem yet.

  Meenom cracked his knuckles and emitted a faint fishy odor. “I wish I could be sure of that. I do not always understand my childling, especially after the events that occurred on our last planet, Geembol Seven.”

  “What happened there?” I asked. I realized at once that I sounded too eager.

  Meenom tapped his nose three times. “I have said too much. I will ask you to keep this conversation in confidence. It might disturb Pleskit to know I was talking to you this way.”

  “I guess I can do that,” I said uneasily. I started to say more but was interrupted by Ms. Buttsman rushing into the room. “Sir, I think you had better come quickly. We’ve got more trouble!”

  CHAPTER 15 [PLESKIT]

  GRAND DELUSIONS

  I saw Tim and the Fatherly One rush out of the private office but did not give their arrival much attention. That was because I was entirely focused on the alien delegation… or, to be more specific, on the insectoid woman who was part of the group. The sight of her strange beauty had triggered whatever peanut butter was lingering in my system, and I had thrown myself to the floor in front of her. Now I was weeping at her feet.

  “Don’t leave me,” I pleaded desperately. “I love the way you click. If you click and I tick, we could make beautiful music together.”

  “Good grief,” I heard Tim mutter. “He’s having a peanut butter flashback!”

  “Pleskit!” roared my parental unit. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Following my heart, O Fatherly One, just as you have always taught me to do. I have finally found the woman of my dreams, an insectoid whose beauty could make the very planets veer from their courses. I cannot bear to see her simply blast off and leave me!”

  The insect woman made a series of angry-sounding clicks and chitters.

  “Pleskit, stand up this minute!” roared the Fatherly One. The smell that accompanied his command brought me to my senses. I blinked and leaped to my feet. “Save me from myself!” I cried.

  Our visitors all spoke at once, two of them using words that I could not understand. The Fatherly One hurried forward, belching soothingly.

  Tim scurried around the group, grabbed my arm, and whispered, “Let’s get out of here!”

  We hurried to my room.

  “I am not fit to live among civilized beings,” I groaned.

  “That’s okay,” said Tim, trying to sound cheerful. “At least you’ll still fit in here on Earth!”

  “There is no humor in this, Tim. I am a walking disgrace, an embarrassment waiting to happen, a social disaster area, a scandal on—”

  “All right, all right! I get the picture. But that was just another peanut butter episode, right?”

  “I do not know,” I groaned. “I do not know anything anymore.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, the Fatherly One called me into his office.

  “What, exactly, is going on with you?” he asked. His voice and the odors emitted by his sphen-gnut-ksher were gentle and stern at the same time. “In addition to that outrageous display you put on with our guest from Peablam VI, the school has called to complain of yet another incident.”

  “I think we have isolated the source of the problem,” I said. “I seem to have an extreme reaction to an Earthling food called peanut butter.”

  The Fatherly One’s sphen-gnut-ksher sparked—never a good sign. “We are both well aware that new elements in your environment may disturb your metabolism. However, you have been trained from the time of hatching to control yourself better than this, Pleskit. There is too much at stake right now. If you can’t keep yourself under control, I fear I will have to withdraw you from the school.”

  “But, Fatherly One—”

  “No more!” he said, raising his hands to cut off my protest. “Please do not add to my already considerable problems.”

  My insides cold and heavy, I trudged from the office back to my room.

  * * *

  When McNally and I arrived at school on Monday, Mr. Grand again called me to the office.

  “Pleskit, your presence here is beginning to affect the other students,” he said sadly. “While I am personally fond of you, I cannot let your problems in self-control affect the educational program I am trying to run. I’m sure you understand that this cannot go on.”

  “I completely agree,” I said.

  “Good,” said Mr. Grand. “So I know you will not take it the wrong way when I tell you that I am going to suggest to your parental unit that he withdraw you from the school, for the good of yourself, the other students, and the developing interplanetary relationship.”

  “You’re throwing me out?” I cried.

  Mr. Grand frowned. “That’s a very harsh way to phrase it, Pleskit. I am suggesting a voluntary withdrawal, for the sake of all concerned.”

  “But it’s not my—”

  “Ah-ah!” said Mr. Grand. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. It’s time for you to stop blaming your behavior on some imaginary ‘chemical reaction’ and start accepting responsibility for your own actions. Chemistry only counts in chemistry class.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, I asked Tim to come to the embassy with me again.

  “I do not know what to do,” I said, once we were in the privacy of my room. “The Fatherly One has been called away to urgent meetings, all of which seem to have to do with the disruption I have caused. The good news is, that means he has not yet received Mr. Grand’s message asking that I be taken out of school. The bad news is, he will get that message shortly after he returns.” I flung myself onto the air mattress, which let me float a few feet above the floor. “I despair, Tim. It seems I bring trouble everywhere I go. If I am expelled, it will be an interplanetary scandal that may end our time here and make Earth subject to colonization!”

  “I can’t believe Mr. Grand is so clueless!” said Tim. “He’s just doing this because you’re an alien. If you were an Earth kid, he’d have to go through all kinds of stuff before he could kick you out. You can tell how hard it is to throw a kid out just by the fact that we still have Jordan in our midst.” He paused in his rant. “How about McNally? Have you talked to him about this?”

  “McNally is in a great deal of trouble too. He let me out of his sight to try to talk some sense into Jordan. But that was a violation of his prime directive. I am terrified that he will be relieved of his duties!”

  “That would be horrible!” cried Tim.

  “I know. And I feel so guilty about all this. McNally is not blaming me. He says that it was his own fault for trying to deal with Jordan instead of watching me. He also says that if the problem were simply how to attract a girl’s interest, he could help me just fine. He seems to feel that is one of his specialties. But on the matter of getting uninterested in girls, he is of no use.”

  “Hmmm. We can’t count on the Butt for help; she would just as soon have you out of the school anyway. What about Beezle Whompis?”

  I looked up in surprise. “I had not thought about him. I do not really know him yet. He is a very strange b
eing.”

  “Yeah.” Tim laughed. “Not normal, like us.”

  “He does not even have a regular body,” I said.

  “That might make him all the more suited to discuss bodily functions,” said Tim. “He can take an outsider’s view on the question.”

  * * *

  When we entered the outer office, where Beezle Whompis normally held guard over the Fatherly One’s door, we were disappointed to see that the new secretary was not at his desk.

  We were turning to go when we heard a crackle of sound. Suddenly Beezle Whompis was there.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It takes a fair amount of energy to maintain my physical appearance. Sometimes I let it slip when no one is around, just to rest for a bit. Can I help you, Pleskit?”

  Quickly I explained what had happened with Mr. Grand at school that day. Beezle Whompis’s long, lean face grew dark with anger. He shimmered out of sight and reappeared next to me. “It is not appropriate for a man charged with the education of children to have such a slight understanding of the way chemistry affects the brain, of the way body and mind are linked together. The same kind of thing that happened to you could easily happen to a human, given the right foodstuff.”

  “You mean you could make humans get all ga-ga-goopy that way?” asked Tim nervously.

  “Not necessarily that specific reaction,” said Beezle Whompis. “I just mean that you could create a short-term personality change.” He peered at Tim more closely. “You look skeptical, young Earthling. Perhaps a demonstration is in order.”

  “You mean you’ve got something like that already?” Tim asked.

  Beezle Whompis smiled. “Of course not. But I suspect I could work something up without much trouble.” He paused for a moment and went frizzy around the edges. Then, as if he had made up his mind about something, he grew solid again and said, “Follow me.”