Sixth-Grade Alien

by Bruce Coville

  “Well, what is its job?” asked the man.

  “To gather energy and focus it for future use,” I said. I did not add that it also records all I experience during a day so I can study what has happened, and learn from my mistakes.

  “Can you shoot it at people?” asked another of the men.

  “Shoot it?” I replied, puzzled by the question.

  “Like a gun.”

  I actually laughed, which I probably should not have done. “The sphen-gnut-ksher emits energy to protect me if I am in danger. I cannot use it as an aggressive weapon. That would be silly.”

  “Yeah, Mortenson,” said another of the men, smiling. “That would be silly.”

  “What’s this all about, anyway?” asked McNally again.

  “Shut up, McNally,” said several of the men.

  “Please do not talk to Mr. McNally that way,” I said. “He is my friend, and that is disrespectful.”

  “Yeah,” said McNally with a smile. “It’s disrespectful.”

  The leader rolled his eyes, then asked me the next question. But he kept coming back to the sphen-gnut-ksher. As near as I could make out, what they really wanted to know was how dangerous it was, and whether there was some way they could make one for themselves.

  It seemed like forever before one of them said, “I think that’s about enough for now. Thanks for the information, Pleskit. You can return to your room now.”

  I was exhausted, and somewhat cranky. The whole episode had been so upsetting that I had to finussher.

  “I need to stop at my Personal Needs Chamber,” I told McNally as we were walking back to the classroom.

  “I understand completely,” he said. He sounded a little uncomfortable himself.

  He took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. Then he positioned himself next to it while I went into the chamber. As I went around the sight barrier, into the main space, I was astonished to find one of my classmates standing near the whizzoria.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked angrily. My sphen-gnut-ksher was starting to sizzle.

  “Don’t zap me!” he cried, diving behind the whizzoria.

  I sighed. “I am not going to zap you, Nerdbutt. I just want to be alone so I can finussher!”

  He looked surprised, and a little sad. “Maybe the others are right after all,” he said, half to himself.

  “Right about what?”

  “That you’re a stuck-up snot.”

  “Why do you say that?” I cried.

  “Why did you call me Nerdbutt?” he countered.

  This confused me. “Isn’t that your name?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said.

  “So it is your name,” I said, more confused than ever.

  “Of course it’s not my name! It’s just something that Jordan likes to call me.”

  “Oh, Jordan,” I said. “The nasty one.”

  “That’s him,” said the intruder. “Look, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. I’ve been trying to ever since you got here, but there’s always someone around you, or you’re getting pulled away to talk to someone, or you’re coming in here. I was afraid you might leave for good before I even had a chance to say hello, and I’ve been waiting all my life to meet someone like you. I’ll go away right now, if you want me to. I just had to tell you that not everyone is upset that you’re here. I think it’s the most exciting thing that ever happened, and I’d really, really like to be friends!”

  Given what had happened to me so far, it was hard to be mad at someone who simply wanted to be friends—even if he had invaded my privacy.

  “What is your real name?” I asked.

  “Tim Tompkins,” he said, putting out his hand.

  My training modules had prepared me for this ritual. “I am Pleskit Meenom, childling of Meenom Ventrah, childling of Ventrah Komquist,” I replied, leaving out the smells and body sounds I would have added for someone who had full use of his senses.

  We grasped hands and shook.

  “You know, you will probably get in trouble for coming in here,” I said.

  Tim made that up-and-down shoulder motion Earthlings call a shrug. “I’m used to getting in trouble. And this used to be my hangout, before they put in all the fancy plumbing. How do you use this stuff, anyway?”

  “That is a very private question!”

  Tim, whose face is usually pink, turned red.

  “That’s amazing!” I cried. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Turn red like that. What a good trick!”

  “It’s just a blush,” said Tim, becoming even redder than he was already.

  “Can you teach me to do it? It would probably make the Fatherly One fall over!”

  “I don’t think I can teach you,” said Tim Tompkins. “It’s just something you do when you’re embarrassed.”

  “I did not mean to embarrass you,” I said urgently.

  “Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time.”

  “But I thought it was a great crime to embarrass someone—almost as bad as not speaking the absolute truth.”

  Tim burst into laughter.

  “What is so funny?” I asked.

  “The idea that we always tell the absolute truth! People here lie all the time! What made you think we don’t?”

  I could not answer. I was seized by horror.

  Finally I began to understand what had been happening to me.

  CHAPTER 17 [TIM]

  BUDDIES

  Pleskit began to sway. A terrible odor came from the knob on top of his head.

  “Are you all right?” I cried.

  “How can I be all right? I have been betrayed!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My training modules did not tell me the truth!” A bitter new scent filled the air. “They were lying about the truth, Tim! That was why I said those terrible things my first day here—my training modules had taught me that Earthlings value the absolute truth above all else.”

  “Are you kidding? We live on little white lies.”

  Pleskit slid to the floor. Even though he was in a sitting position, he was so quiet that for a minute I was afraid he had fainted, or had a heart attack, or something. I figured I was going to have to go for help. This idea was not all that appealing, since it would mean admitting I had been in Pleskit’s bathroom instead of at the dentist’s.

  Just as I was heading for the door, he opened his eyes and took a deep breath. “Would you like to come home with me this afternoon?” he asked.

  My first impulse was to scream, “ARE YOU KIDDING! I WOULD LOVE TO COME HOME WITH YOU! I’VE BEEN DYING TO SEE INSIDE WHERE YOU LIVE!!!!”

  Fortunately, I managed not to do that. Fighting to keep my voice calm, I said, “Yeah, I’d like that. Thank you.” But inside, I felt like I had fireworks going off in my brain.

  * * *

  It was one of the longer days of my life. After Pleskit went back to the classroom, I stayed in his Personal Needs Chamber for another hour and a half. After all, I was supposed to be at a dentist appointment. So I couldn’t go back to the room right away. (It wasn’t until later that I realized I could just have gone back and said the appointment had been canceled. I’m not real good at this sneaky stuff.)

  Since I didn’t have a watch, I had to wait for Pleskit to come back and tell me when enough time had gone by.

  I spent some time trying to figure out Pleskit’s plumbing, of course. I couldn’t make much sense of it, though. And when I tossed a wad of gum down that hole in the floor, it disappeared with a flash and a sizzle. So I decided not to try peeing down it, even though I really had to go.

  To make things worse, I missed lunch. I was so hungry I felt like my belly button was kissing my backbone.

  I decided to pretend I was a prisoner of a horrible intergalactic villain. Pressing myself against a wall, I imagined I was being held there by an unbreakable force field.

  By the time Pleskit came in to tell me
it was okay to go back to the classroom, I felt like both my head and my bladder were going to explode. (Even then I had to wait for him to go back to the room before I could come out, since we didn’t want McNally to see the two of us leaving the Personal Needs Chamber together.)

  * * *

  All I could think about for the rest of the afternoon was going to Pleskit’s place. I was so distracted I made three really stupid mistakes in math, which is normally one of my best subjects. Also, I was pretty sure the clock had died altogether, since it took at least fourteen hours to go from 1:13 to 1:14.

  I did get a note from Linnsy saying: “SO WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!?!”

  “Mission accomplished!” I wrote, and sent the note back.

  She smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  * * *

  When the day finally ended, Pleskit motioned to me. I went to where he was standing. He introduced me to his bodyguard and said that I would be going home with them.

  McNally nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Ms. Weintraub seemed pleased, and surprised, when we left the room together. Linnsy, however, looked jealous. I realized I was going to owe her one incredibly massive favor.

  * * *

  Pleskit’s limousine was totally cool; the backseat alone was almost as big as my mother’s whole car.

  But the limo was nothing compared to the embassy. When we got there, a door opened in the ground, and we drove down a long ramp. Then we took this slick glass elevator up the “hook” (as Pleskit called the curving support piece) into the embassy itself.

  “Shall we go to the kitchen for a snack?” asked Pleskit.

  “Sounds great!” I said. “I’m starving!”

  Immediately I wondered if I had just done something really stupid. What kind of “snack” had I let myself in for?

  We went into the kitchen, and I screamed.

  Man, I have never felt so stupid! I mean, I thought I was so cool about aliens and stuff, but when I finally met a truly weird one face-to-face, it just wigged me out for a minute.

  “Are you all right?” asked Pleskit, looking very concerned. “Oh, good. You’re doing that trick where you turn red! I hoped you would show that to Shhh-foop.”

  I figured out that by “Shhh-foop” he meant the creature who was sliding across the floor to greet me. She looked like a six-foot-tall bunch of spotted orange celery with an octopus growing out of its top. “Greetings, Mr. Timothy!” she sang in an amazingly beautiful voice. Then she extended a tentacle to me.

  Cautiously, I reached out and took the tentacle. “Greetings,” I replied, trying not to squeak.

  She squeezed my hand, leaving only a trace of slime.

  “I was just making some finnikle-pokta,” she sang. (According to Pleskit, she always sings; it must be like living in an opera.) “Would you boys like some?”

  “We sure would!” cried Pleskit eagerly.

  “Uh… sure,” I said, torn between hunger and terror.

  “Cup of coffee, Mr. McNally?” sang Shhh-foop.

  “How is it today?” asked McNally, sounding uncertain.

  “New recipe,” sang Shhh-foop. She slid across the floor and whacked a pair of tentacles against a smooth countertop. Up popped a steaming pot of coffee. She poured a cup and brought it to McNally, who looked at it nervously.

  Pleskit and I sat down at the table. I yelped again when the chair started shifting under my butt.

  Pleskit smiled. “Do not be alarmed. It is simply adjusting to make you more comfortable.”

  He was right. In about thirty seconds it was the most comfortable chair I had ever sat in.

  Just then a door slid open and someone else came into the room. He was green, a little over four feet tall, and probably almost that big across the center. He had on a skintight red suit with a broad yellow stripe around the center. It made him look like a beach ball with arms and legs.

  “Greetings, Barvgis!” said Pleskit. “Come meet Tim Tompkins from my class in school.”

  As Barvgis came closer I could see that his skin was covered with slime. I tried to stay cool about it, but it wasn’t easy. My mother used to call her old boss a slimeball, but that was just because of the way he acted. This guy really was a slimeball!

  It turned out that he was also nice and friendly. He wanted to practice telling me Earth jokes—which he then asked me to explain to him.

  While we were talking, Shhh-foop slid over to the table carrying a tray in her tentacles. It was made of blue metal and had a rim that looked almost like a fence. Piled on top of the tray were the finnikle-pokta. (That’s what you call a bunch of them; just one is a fin-pok.) About the size of walnuts, they looked like a cross between a honeycomb and a sponge. They came in several bright colors. And they all had stuff oozing out of the holes.

  “Yum!” cried Pleskit, grabbing one and popping it into his mouth. “I love these things!”

  War had broken out in my stomach. Part of it was crying, “FEED ME! I AM STARVING!” Another part was screaming, “DON’T YOU DARE TRY SENDING ONE OF THOSE THINGS DOWN HERE!”

  One fin-pok squeaked and rolled across the plate.

  “Hurry,” said Pleskit. “They’re best when they’re fresh.”

  It wasn’t hunger that got me to eat one. It was the fact that I would have had to consider myself a failure and a fraud if, after all this time of wanting to meet aliens, I had been afraid to try the first piece of food they offered me.

  So I reached out and took one.

  Trying to describe it would be like trying to describe a totally new color, a color that wasn’t like any other color you had ever seen. I simply don’t have the right words. Let’s just say that the fin-pok seemed to find parts of my tongue I hadn’t even known existed. Some of them were happy to be found; some were not.

  I ate six finnikle-pokta in all—two red, two green, two purple. Each had its own specific taste.

  “Good, huh?” said Pleskit, wiping juice from his chin.

  “Fascinating,” I replied, with absolute honesty.

  On the other side of the room I noticed McNally pouring his coffee into something I figured must be a sink.

  Shhh-foop saw him, too. “Alas, alas,” she sang in a voice so sad it almost made me cry. “Once again Shhh-foop has failed to properly honor the bean of caffeine.”

  “Don’t worry, Shhh-foop,” said McNally. “You’ll get it right one of these days. I’m going to my room, guys. See you later.”

  I started to ask Pleskit why his bodyguard could leave him. Then I realized that—of course—McNally wouldn’t need to be on duty in their home. The embassy probably had better security systems than Fort Knox.

  * * *

  After our snack Pleskit wanted to introduce me to his dad, or The Fatherly One, as he called him.

  We took the elevator to the next level of the embassy.

  “First we have to get past his secretary,” said Pleskit as we went through an oval door. The room we entered, blue and shaped like an egg, had a round desk mounted about halfway up the wall. Sitting behind the desk was an alien who made me think of an overgrown hamster. She was wearing a tight red outfit and stuffing something into her cheek as we came in.

  “Greetings, Mikta-makta-mookta,” said Pleskit. “This is my friend, Tim.”

  “Greetings, Tim,” said Mikta-makta-mookta pleasantly. “I am very pleased to meet you.”

  “Is the Fatherly One available?” asked Pleskit.

  “Alas, no. He has agreed to have a televised debate with the despicable Senator Hargis tonight. He is hoping to undo some of the damage that you—”

  She stopped, as if she had said something she shouldn’t. I glanced at Pleskit. He looked terrible.

  “He is hoping to smooth things over with the people of Earth,” said Mikta-makta-mookta.

  “I will wait and speak to him later,” said Pleskit.

  I followed him out of the room.

  “We must talk to someone about the training modules,” he said. “Pe
rhaps we should visit the Grandfatherly One.”

  “You brought your grandfather along?” I asked in surprise.

  “Well, not the total Grandfatherly One. He died before I was born. But we’ve still got his brain. Let’s go hear what it has to say.”

  CHAPTER 18 [PLESKIT]

  THE GRANDFATHERLY ONE’S BRAIN

  Tim looked horrified and his voice sounded unusually squawky as he cried, “You kept your grandfather’s brain after he died?”

  Before I could answer, he closed his eyes. I could smell just the tiniest hint of embarrassment—the first time I realized that Earthlings have any ability to communicate by smell. When he opened his eyes again, I could tell he was trying to be calm. “That’s very interesting,” he said. “It is not a custom that we follow.”

  “Perhaps you do not have the right technology,” I said.

  “I’m sure we don’t,” replied Tim.

  “Well, come along. I will introduce you to the Venerated One. You’ll be his first Earthling!”

  * * *

  We keep the brain of the Grandfatherly One in a small room located between the living area and the business area. The room is quiet and peaceful. (“Boring” is how the Grandfatherly One describes it.)

  Tim kept looking around as I led him to that room, going, “Wow!” and “Cool!” as we passed different areas. But when we got to the room of the Grandfatherly One, my new friend just stood and stared for a while. Finally he said, “That’s your grandfather?”

  The brain of the Grandfatherly One resides in a clear vat. The vat is filled with an electrolyte solution that keeps him comfortable. Mounted on the sides of the vat are a pair of speakers that allow him to express his thoughts.

  “I am what’s left of Pleskit’s Grandfatherly One,” he said. “Should have let go of this life long ago, but Meenom asked me to stay around to advise him. As his Fatherly One, I felt I had to. Not that he ever actually asks for my advice.”

  “You speak English?” asked Tim in astonishment.

  “I don’t speak at all, when you come right down to it. Just send my thoughts to the little boxes on the side of this body substitute, and they do the speaking. When we decided to settle here, Meenom had the computer processor changed so I could express myself in English—as if I ever had the chance or the need! So, what brings you here, anyway, Pleskit? And who’s your friend?”