I Shrank My Teacher

by Bruce Coville

  I wonder if life here will ever get any easier.

  At least I didn’t get kicked off the planet. So it still beats Geembol Seven.

  The Fatherly One was very angry about my borrowing his Molecule Compactor, of course. But he was also chagrined because it was his “wonderful new employee,” Ms. Buttsman, who let Mikta-makta-mookta into the classroom. So things sort of balanced out in that regard.

  Much as I would like to let Ms. Buttsman take all the blame, it wasn’t really her fault. Because Mikta-makta-mookta had worked in the embassy, she knew our rules and procedures. So she had been able to fake documents presenting herself as a school inspector that met all the security standards, even passed the electronic scanning test. Given all that, Ms. Buttsman had no reason not to believe “Mr. Tommakkio” was real.

  Even so, I could tell she was plenty embarrassed about her part in the whole sorry mess.

  Speaking of embassy staff—here’s a news flash: Yesterday the Fatherly One informed us that his new assistant, Beezle Whompis, will arrive in less than a week.

  Please join me in hoping that he/she/it will be someone/something I can get along with. I have been told only that this being is (a) extremely efficient, (b) has the highest possible rating for loyalty and dedication (headquarters owes that to the Fatherly One, after assigning him the traitorous Mikta-makta-mookta the first time around), and (c) is categorized as an “alternate life-form.” That should be interesting. I wonder how Tim will react when he meets a being as weird (by Earth standards) as this one is bound to be.

  Oh, well. I can’t worry about that now. I have enough troubles already.

  On the other hand, things could be worse. At least some of the kids think I’m “cool” now. And we no longer have to worry about Mikta-makta-mookta being on the loose.

  I have to get ready for school, so I’ll sign off. I hope, hope, HOPE you can come visit sometime soon.

  Until then—Fremmix Bleeblom!

  Your chilly pal,

  Pleskit

  SPECIAL BONUS: On the following pages you will find Part Two of “Disaster on Geembol Seven”—the story of what happened to Pleskit on the last planet where he lived before coming to Earth.

  This story will be told in six thrilling installments, one included at the end of each of the first six books in the Sixth-Grade Alien series.

  Look for the next installment at the end of Book Three, Missing—One Brain!

  DISASTER ON GEEMBOL SEVEN PART TWO: TO LISTEN IS A CRIME

  FROM: Pleskit Meenom, on Planet Earth

  TO: Maktel Geebrit, on Planet Hevi-Hevi

  Dear Maktel:

  Okay, I am ready to tell you a little more about what happened on Geembol Seven.

  Just to remind you: The Fatherly One and I went into the city on the night of the moondance. Separated from the Fatherly One, I spotted a six-eyed boy who seemed to need help. I followed him to the waterside, where we sat under one of the huge old docks to talk. But when I leaned against one of the pilings, it opened up and a cold hand pulled me inside.

  Here is what happened next:

  “Shhh!” hissed a voice close to my ear. “Stay quiet, and I won’t hurt you. Make a sound, and it may be your last!”

  The voice was wet and bubbly, as if whomever it belonged to were speaking through a layer of water. I stayed quiet. The boy I had followed slipped through the opening as well. Once he was inside, it slid shut.

  The darkness was complete—as was my terror.

  My sphen-gnut-ksher began to spark.

  “Don’t try using that thing on me,” snarled my captor. “I’m shielded against it.”

  As he still had his hand over my mouth, I could not explain that I did not have complete control over the sphen-gnut-ksher’s protective eruptions, that they happened instinctively if my body felt I was in enough danger to warrant them.

  By the intermittent light of my own sparks I could see the face of the six-eyed boy. He looked as sad as ever. But now his face showed terror, too.

  “Let him go, Balteeri,” said the boy suddenly. “We shouldn’t have done this. It was a mistake.”

  “It’s too late to turn back now, Derrvan.”

  Before the boy could respond, the ground began to sink beneath us. I felt a new jolt of fear. Were we caught in some kind of earthquake? My fear subsided a little when the smoothness of our descent made me realize that the inside of the piling was actually a kind of elevator. Not that I stopped being afraid altogether. After all, I was still a captive, being dragged below the surface of a planet that I had only been living on for a few days.

  The elevator stopped and I was pulled backward into a large sandcave. Blue glowballs mounted on posts provided dim illumination. Pulsing green things clung to the ceiling. Their long tentacles dangled beneath them, writhing and twisting.

  Balteeri released his grip on me. He didn’t need to tell me not to run. The cave was small; there was no place to escape to, no tunnels to hide myself in.

  I turned to face him. To my surprise and horror, he was not a completely organic being, but rather a strange mix of mechanical and living parts. He had four arms—three mechanical, one made of flesh. The mechanical arms each had a tool where the hand or tentacles would normally have been. One of his eyes was real, the other clearly mechanical. His writhing metallic tail was as thick as my arm. Such constructs have been forbidden since the Delfiner War, of course. So where could he have come from?

  Though the Fatherly One has been trying to teach me to hide my emotions (an important skill for a diplomatic trader), my training failed me then.

  “Ah,” said Balteeri when he saw the look on my face. “You are not used to seeing illegal beings. At least, you think you are not used to it. From my point of view, you are illegal, young Hevi-Hevian. What do you think of that?”

  I didn’t know what to think, and I said so.

  My captor laughed, an odd, bubbling kind of sound. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Children are rarely taught the sins of their parents. Only the stories of glory get passed along.”

  “What do you want of me? I am here as part of a diplomatic mission, and as such I have immunity. If I am harmed, there will be grave consequences.”

  I spoke these words firmly, which was something I was taught almost from the day I had emerged from my egg.

  My captor laughed again. “Your being brought down here is a grave consequence—a consequence of other actions, taken by other beings. Everything has consequences, young Hevi-Hevian, and they spread through time like ripples through the sea. As to the consequences for myself—well, the greater one’s desperation, the greater one’s anger, the greater the injustice one has suffered, the less one cares for threats like that.”

  “Enough, Balteeri,” said the boy who had gotten me into this. “We didn’t bring him here to terrorize him.”

  The construct blinked and nodded. “Forgive me, Derrvan. Sometimes I grant my anger more power over my emotions than is wise. You are correct.”

  One of the tentacled beasts clinging to the cave’s ceiling fell to the floor. It landed with a soggy plop and began squirming in our direction. Derrvan stepped aside nervously. But Balteeri simply pursed his lips and emitted a high-pitched squeal. The creature quivered and pulled its tentacles in so that it looked like nothing more than a blob of green jelly.

  I turned to Derrvan. “Why bother with all this, with dragging me down here, with scaring me so much, if all you want is my help? That was why I followed you—so I could help you.”

  “Would you have agreed to come with me if you knew about my companion?” asked the boy.

  I glanced at Balteeri nervously but did not answer.

  Derrvan narrowed his six eyes and asked intently, “Would you have agreed to listen to my story if you knew that listening to it could make you a criminal?”

  The fear this comment gave me was different from the physical fear that struck when I was pulled into the piling. This was a small, tight, cold fear, centered in my cl
inkus.

  “How can simply listening to a story be a crime?” I asked.

  “How can simply existing be a crime?” replied Balteeri bitterly.

  For that I had no answer.

  “Will you listen to this story?” asked Derrvan. “I repeat: For you to listen to it here on Geembol Seven is a crime. I will not force you—”

  Balteeri made a growling sound, but Derrvan waved him to silence.

  “If you decline, we will return you to the surface, and you will suffer nothing more than unfulfilled curiosity, and perhaps, sometimes late at night, a slight twinge of guilt. To listen is a crime, but in listening you open yourself to the chance to right an ancient wrong so foul that the memory of it cries to the stars.”

  “Why me?” I asked, partly because I was baffled by his words, but even more to gain time, time to make a decision, time to try to understand.

  “Because it is easier to speak truth to youth,” said Balteeri. “Those who have achieved adulthood are often so sure they know what is real that they cannot hear truth even when it is shouting in their ears, cannot see what is true even when it slaps them on the face and cries, ‘Look at me! See me! Listen to my story!’ ”

  I nodded. “If I do listen to your story… then what?”

  “Then you will also be faced with another choice,” said Derrvan. “The choice of whether you will help us or not. I warn you now, helping us will be an even greater crime than listening to our story.”

  “But what happened was a great crime, too,” said Balteeri darkly. “Not a violation of law, perhaps, but a crime against decency.”

  I looked at the two of them—Derrvan, so young and frightened, his six eyes brimming with sorrow, with need, with hope, with fear (you can express a lot with six eyes); Balteeri so angry and yet so righteous—and I thought of something the Fatherly One has often said to me: “We trade in strange and precious things gathered from all across the galaxy. Yet of all the things that I have seen, nothing is more strange and precious than the Truth. Grab it when you can.”

  “Tell me your story,” I said.

  Before Derrvan could speak, something burst through the wall of the cave.

  To be continued…

  More from this Series

  Missing—One Brain!

  Book 3

  Lunch Swap Disaster

  Book 4

  Zombies of the Science…

  Book 5

  Class Pet Catastrophe

  Book 6

  More from the Author

  Goblins in the Castle

  Goblins on the Prowl

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

  Bruce Coville has published more than one hundred books, including My Teacher Is an Alien; Into the Land of the Unicorns; and Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. He is a frequent speaker at schools and conferences, and has presented on five continents. He is also the founder and producing director of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company that creates recordings of the best in children’s and young adult literature. He lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, author and illustrator Katherine Coville. Visit him online at BruceCoville.com.

  Glen Mullaly is an award-winning illustrator whose work can be found in books, magazines, greeting cards, and posters. He has also created puzzles and paper crafts for McDonald’s, and his Star Wars comics for kids (illustrated by legendary artist Ken Steacy) have been released by Marvel Comics in graphic novel format. In addition to the Sixth-Grade Alien series, he also illustrated Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is an Alien series. He lives on the West Coast with his wife and cat. Visit Glen at GlenMullaly.com and follow him on Facebook at glenmullalyillustration.

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  DON’T MISS THE REST OF THE SIXTH-GRADE ALIENS SERIES!

  Sixth-Grade Alien

  I Shrank My Teacher

  Missing—One Brain!

  Lunch Swap Disaster

  A GLOSSARY OF ALIEN TERMS USED BY PLESKIT

  Following is a list of Hevi-Hevian words and phrases used by Pleskit in Books One and Two of Sixth-Grade Alien. The numerals after the definitions indicate the book and chapter where the term was first used—for example (I:4) means the term first appeared in Book One, Chapter Four.

  Though we are only giving the spelling of the words here, in actual usage many of them would be accompanied by smells or body sounds.

  CLINKUS:

  an internal organ connecting the breathing and the digestive systems (I:4).

  FEBRIL GNURXIS:

  a sweet, nutritious breakfast cereal (I:4).

  FEEBRIX:

  an essential part of the reproductive process on Hevi-Hevi (II:10).

  FIN-POK:

  a sweet snack, made from grain, pollen, and living honey (plural: finnikle-pokta) (I:17).

  FINUSSHER:

  release bodily wastes (I:6).

  FLINKEL:

  a large creature, something like a cat only covered with stiff green scales; known for its ferocity (I:2).

  FREMMIX BLEEBLOM:

  traditional Hevi-Hevi words of farewell; loose translation “May the stars sit on your shoulder” (I:2).

  GEZUP-GEZOP:

  basically, “If that’s what you really want!” Considered slightly vulgar, and always used in an angry or sarcastic way (I:4).

  GIB-STIKKLE:

  unusual, strange, goofy (I:26).

  GNERF:

  an annoying, insectlike creature (ten legs, hard green exoskeleton) that inhabits cargo ships. Used as a term of insult, as in “you little gnerf” (I:21).

  GNUCKS:

  small, predatory creatures, something like lizards with wings; known for the vicious way they attack anything that has the scent of blood on it. They travel in packs and can strip a large animal to its bones in a matter of minutes (I:6).

  GULZEEMIA:

  legendary lost city; capital of the first Hevi-Hevian empire (I:18).

  KLEPTRA:

  a state of mental and physical shutdown created by excess stress, as in “By the time the exam was over I thought I would go into kleptra” (I:8).

  KLIMPLED:

  overwhelmed by excess stimuli; as in “The amusement park was so crowded, smelly, and noisy that Pingdl Foosian began to feel klimpled” (I:7).

  KLING-GHAT:

  a formal robe, used for special occasions. Usually, but not always, decorated with shifting symbols that tell important myth-stories (I:4).

  KLING-KPHUT:

  a temporary state of unconsciousness, usually quite blissful. Though normally attained by meditation, a blast from a sphen-gnut-ksher can also throw someone into kling-kphut (I:10).

  MEETUMLICHT:

  binding to one’s honor (I:2).

  PINGLIES:

  large, four-eyed amphibians that roam the subtropical wampfields of Hevi-Hevi; the size of cows (but built like frogs) they tend to travel in packs (I:8).

  PIZUMPTA:

  a special state of dread created by social blunders and causing the internal organs to go cold; a sensitive Hevi-Hevian in an advanced state of pizumpta may need to be hospitalized (I:8).

  PLINKTUM:

  an internal organ, part of the circulatory system (I:12).

  PLONKUS:

  a blubbery creature found in the northern ponds of Hevi-Hevi. Known for extreme gluttony; given enough food, a plonkus will eat until it cannot move. In extreme cases they have been known to explode (I:12).

  SKEEZPUL:

  a word too naughty to translate! (I:19).

  SKIGPOO:

  bad, suspicious, slimy, or rotten (I:18).

  SKAKKA:

  large, slow herd animal. Extremely tasty when cooked in the proper fashion but deadly poisonous if not prepared correctly (I:6).

  SPARTZIKS:

  trained hunting liz
ards (II:19).

  SPHEN-GNUT-KSHER:

  the stalk and knob that grow from the top of a Hevi-Hevian’s head; used to gather both information and energy, and also for self-protection (I:4).

  SPLORK:

  erupt with anger; a rare action, considered inappropriate to a civilized being in all but the most extreme circumstances (II:9).

  SPLURGIS:

  a sweet delicacy, taken from the inside of large pods that grow deep under the wampfields (II:3).

  SPRINDLE A GLIXXIT:

  a slightly vulgar expression for extreme emotional reaction; literally “fart so hard it breaks the chair” (II:10).

  WHIZZORIA:

  place where you finussher; self-cleaning (I:16).

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This Aladdin paperback edition August 2020

  Text copyright © 1999, 2020 by Bruce Coville

  Previously published in 1999 as The Attack of the Two-Inch Teacher

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Glen Mullaly

  Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.

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