I clutched my head in terror. “You’re going to make me stupid?”
“Someone already beat us to it,” said Mikta-makta-mookta. “What we’re going to do now is give you a clean slate. You won’t remember a thing when we’re done, not even your name. You’ll be able to start over again. Don’t think of it as losing your mind, think of it as being given a second chance at childhood. Maybe you can do a better job of it the second time around. Of course, since we’re only resetting your mind, in about ten years you’ll have the brain of a child in the body of a man. However, that seems to be a very common condition on this planet, so you should fit right in.”
I started to tremble. I actually liked being a kid. But the idea of starting again from scratch at the age of eleven was pretty terrifying. My mother would take care of me, of course. But the idea that I would not recognize her the next time I saw her, that I would never have a real memory of my father, gripped my throat.
“This is a vile crime you are contemplating,” said Pleskit.
“Yes, it is,” said Harr-giss. “But don’t worry. You won’t remember a thing about it. So you’ll have no idea why your Fatherly One holds such a bitter grudge against you when he is raising you for a second time.”
“Why will he hold a grudge against me?” asked Pleskit.
“Oh, you silly boy,” said Mikta-makta-mookta. “The whole point of this is to destroy his mission. We’re not going to simply erase your and Tim’s memories. We’re going to make it look as if the entire horrible accident was your fault!”
“It’s not hard to imagine the scenario,” said Harr-giss. “When they find the two of you lying dazed and senseless, attached to a piece of technology you should never have touched, everyone will assume that you lured this pathetic Earthling into some mind experiment and accidentally wiped clean both his brain and yours. We’ll work out the details later. Mikta can leak them to the press. They’ll eat it up.”
I groaned at the thought of eating anything. Between the fear and the finnikle-pokta, my stomach was in an uproar.
Harr-giss chuckled, perhaps the scariest sound I had ever heard. “Of course, with luck, I’ll have already put an end to the mission myself by the time I’m done debating Meenom tonight. Everyone who thought ‘Senator Hargis’ was such a yokel alarmist will have to think again when I show them the footage I have from Geembol Seven.”
“You wouldn’t!” cried Pleskit, sounding horrified.
“Are you kidding?” replied Harr-giss. “I can’t wait!”
“How are you going to explain having it?” asked Pleskit.
Harr-giss shrugged. “I’ll say it was smuggled out to me by a source at the White House, someone concerned because the public wasn’t getting the whole truth. The president will protest, of course—as well he might, since it will be a total lie. But no one will believe him. Since your news media have destroyed the credibility of everyone in power, my lies will be at least as believable as their truth.”
He turned to Mikta-makta-mookta and handed her the control device. “I must leave for my debate with Meenom. I really just stopped by to get a kiss for luck. But this little visit turned out to be even luckier than I thought. I had figured that even after tonight it would take a while to end the mission. But this will give us a perfect one-two punch. First I reveal what happened on Geembol Seven. Then you ‘discover’ poor Pleskit and Tim with their brains wiped clean.”
“It’s too bad we have to do a mind wipe on Pleskit, too,” said Mikta-makta-mookta.
I wondered if she was being sympathetic, or maybe just anti-Earthling, until Harr-giss said, “You’re right; it would create even more of a backlash if it was only the Earth boy who got it. Well, we can’t have everything—and we certainly can’t have Pleskit remembering any of this. But here’s an idea. When you ‘discover’ them, call for help from that bodyguard McNally. That way you’ll have an Earthling witness. It’ll play better on the news.”
He turned back to Pleskit and me. “This really is quite delicious, boys. Though you would never know it from the pathetic way they refuse to spend reasonable money on medicine and education, Earthlings have a sentimental attachment to children. This incident will have billions of people demanding that Meenom be sent packing. As ‘Senator Hargis,’ I plan to play their fear like a Pesgallian concert master. We may actually get worldwide riots out of this!”
He gave Mikta-makta-mookta another kiss. “Farewell, my little cheeble-cheeks,” he said. Then he stepped into the elevator and disappeared.
Mikta-makta-mookta turned to us. Her beady eyes glittering, she said, “Okay, boys—time to kiss your brains good-bye.”
CHAPTER 22 [PLESKIT]
THE TECH ROOM
When Mikta-makta-mookta turned her attention back to us, I could not help but emit the smell of bitterness. “You were the one who messed with my training modules, weren’t you?”
“Of course,” she said with a smile. She cracked a mook pod and stuffed the meat into her cheek. “You’re so idealistic, Pleskit. I knew you would fall for that nonsense about Earthlings putting a high value on absolute truth.” She chuckled. “Actually, it’s the best way in the world to offend the silly creatures.”
“I thought we were friends!” I cried.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I was just using you. You already have a flair for getting into trouble. I knew it wouldn’t take much help from me for you to mess up this mission so badly that your father would be recalled—though I must say this latest twist is beyond my fondest hopes. It will take a year or so for things to calm down enough for us to reestablish contact with Earth, of course. But Harr-giss is next in line with a claim, so all we have to do is wait. Then the rules of trade will leave the planet in our control. There won’t be any of that benevolent partnership nonsense your goody-goody father is so fond of. We plan to really squeeze the place.”
“You can’t do that!” cried Tim.
“Of course we can,” said Mikta-makta-mookta. “As Pleskit could have told you if he had wanted to, this planet is classified as ‘Borderline Savage.’ How it is managed is completely up to the trader who holds the primary claim. Meenom Ventrah had his style. Harr-giss and I have ours.”
Tim moaned. Though I could not turn toward him because of the control disk on my neck, I could see him from the corner of my eye. He had already demonstrated that he could turn red and turn white. Now, to my astonishment, he looked slightly green.
I wondered just how many colors he was capable of.
“The question now,” said Mikta-makta-mookta, “is how to get you to the Tech Room. It would be easiest just to make you walk there. But there’s always the danger of running into someone along the way.” She looked around the room for a minute, her nose twitching. Then her beady eyes brightened. “Ah, that’s it!”
She made an adjustment to the control box. I felt my throat tighten, and I could tell that I had lost the ability to speak. Another adjustment and I crumpled to the floor.
Tim landed with a thump beside me.
From where we lay I could see Mikta-makta-mookta walk to the other side of the room. She pulled a couple of large purple bags from a hole in the wall. I recognized them at once: laundry bags.
She stuffed Tim in one bag, me in the other. Chittering contentedly to herself, she tied the bags at the top.
I longed to lash out at her, to strike her with my fists, to shrivel her with words of scorn. Alas, my tongue was tied, as were my hands, by the control disk on the back of my neck.
Once she had us in the bags, Mikta-makta-mookta left the room. I desperately wanted to talk to Tim. I couldn’t, of course, because of the control disk.
My questions about what Mikta-makta-mookta was doing were answered when I heard the door open once more. This was followed by the slight swish of a floating cart as it entered the room. Mikta-makta-mookta hoisted the bag I was in onto the top shelf of the cart—no problem for her, because she was very strong. I assume she put Tim on the bottom shelf.
* * *
When Mikta-makta-mookta untied the bag and pulled me out, we were in the Tech Room. I had not brought Tim here before, because it is off-limits for Earthlings. The shelves and storage bins are filled with all the devices we anticipated needing in our first few years on the planet—everything from flying packs to tentacle straighteners.
“No one will have any trouble believing the Earth boy wanted to see this place,” said Mikta-makta-mookta, glancing around. “Or that you were able to lure him here. Well have to work on your motive, of course, though youthful stupidity will probably suffice. The more imaginative newspapers will probably label you ‘The Death-wish Alien’ or something. Ah, here they are!”
Though I could not see them from where I was lying, I knew what she was referring to: a pair of helmets, bright red and covered with many spiky little towers. They were extremely powerful, and extraordinarily dangerous. Used properly, they could transfer information from one brain to another, or temporarily enhance the power of someone’s brain.
Used improperly, they could erase the contents of a brain the way humans erase a hard drive.
“All right,” she said cheerfully, “let’s see what the best way to arrange this is. Pleskit, stand up.” As she said this she made an adjustment to the control panel, freeing my body enough so that I could do as she commanded.
“Now you, Tim Tompkins,” she said.
A moment later Tim was facing me.
He did not look well. His face was still another color, a kind of ashy gray this time.
Mikta-makta-mookta turned us so that we were standing side by side. Then she placed one of the helmets on my head, the other on Tim’s. Though I could not move my muscles, I could still feel my body. A deep and sinking fear was moving in my guts—terror for myself, for the Fatherly One, and for the planet we had hoped to do so much to help.
Mikta-makta-mookta picked up the controls for the helmets, which were connected by coiling wires.
If only I could lunge forward, strike the control panel from her hand. But though Mikta-makta-mookta was no more than two steps away, she might as well have been on another planet. I thought I would explode from the effort of trying to move.
Her beady eyes glittered at me. “I never did like you, Pleskit,” she said as she put her hand on the dial.
Sick with fear, I prepared to have my memory erased.
Then Tim did something astonishing.
CHAPTER 23 [TIM]
ERUPTION
All right, I admit it. I saved the world by projectile vomiting.
Shhh-foop’s finnikle-pokta had been rumbling around in my stomach ever since I ate them. I might have been able to keep them down, if we hadn’t gotten in such terrible trouble. But from the time we slipped into Mikta-makta-mookta’s room, I had been getting more and more tense.
By the time Harr-giss started talking about wiping out our memories, I had a small war going on down there. And while the disk he had slapped on the back of my neck controlled my voluntary movements, I guess it didn’t have any effect on my body’s involuntary functions. My heart kept beating. My lungs kept breathing. And my stomach kept trying to digest. But finally it gave up the battle.
Since Mikta-makta-mookta was standing right in front of me when my insides erupted, I spewed a stream of red, green, and purple puke directly into her face.
It may not have been classy, but it was effective. She squealed in disgust and dropped the control pad as she tried to wipe her eyes. The pad bounced on the floor. That must have shifted its settings, because I could feel my muscles loosen the instant it landed. Unfortunately, I was too sick to do anything other than drop to my knees and puke again. Pleskit, on the other hand, dived for the control pad. I was still retching, and Mikta-makta-mookta was still wiping barf out of her eyes, when he pulled the control disk off my neck and slapped it onto the back of hers.
“Stand up!” he ordered in a furious voice.
And she stood.
I heaved—a sigh of relief this time. Then I staggered to my feet myself.
“That was an astonishing trick,” said Pleskit as he pulled the control disk from the back of his own neck. “I did not know you could do anything like that. But stars above, what an odor! It’s like trying to smell a dictionary all at once. I can hardly think!”
“Well, I can. And what I think is, we’ve got to get to the studio before Harr-giss shows that video he’s going to surprise your father with. If he convinces the world you guys should be thrown off the planet, it won’t make any difference to anyone except us that we stopped Mikta-makta-mookta. Harr-giss and his gang will still end up running the world.”
“You’re right!” cried Pleskit. He looked down at the control pad. “I am not an expert on using this thing. Let’s just tie her up for now. We’ll come back and get her later.”
“Good idea.”
Mikta-makta-mookta blistered our ears with some amazing curses until Pleskit figured out how to set the No Talking command.
We found some stretchy cord, some super-strong tape, and some wire. We used them all. For good measure, Pleskit set the control pad on Zero Movement—and then took it with him when we left the room.
* * *
“What do we do now?” I asked as we left the Tech Room.
“Stay here for a moment,” said Pleskit. “I want to get something. Then we’ll look for my bodyguard. He should be able to get us to the studio.”
Pleskit returned a few minutes later with a small black box. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get McNally.”
This turned out to be tougher than I expected. Though McNally was living at the embassy, Pleskit had never actually been to his room. We must have checked twenty empty rooms before we found him. When we finally did locate his room, he was taking a nap and we had to pound on his door to wake him.
I have to say he woke up a lot faster than I do. Must have something to do with being a bodyguard. Anyway, once we explained the situation to him, he grabbed his coat and hustled us down to the limousine.
When we got to the parking area, it turned out that Ralph the Driver was not around.
“Have to do it myself,” said McNally, not sounding all that happy.
“Can’t you drive?” asked Pleskit.
“Sure I can drive. I just never drove a car this big. Well, climb in, guys. We’re off to the studio.”
He hit a button. The door to the tunnel swung open. We raced up the ramp, tires screeching as we turned the corner.
Pleskit switched on the backseat television. It took only a moment to find a station broadcasting the debate. It was just starting.
“Hurry!” cried Pleskit urgently. “Hurry!”
McNally hit the gas and the limousine surged forward.
It was only a few miles to the temporary studio, so we got there really fast. Even so, every second was agony as we kept expecting Harr-giss to pull out the Geembol Seven footage.
“What’s on this video anyway?” I asked Pleskit.
He shook his head. “An unfortunate experience that—like the episode with Jordan—looks much worse than it really was. I do not wish to speak about it.”
I bit back a nasty comment. Instead, I suggested a plan for what we should do when we got to the studio.
We both agreed it was a good idea. There was only one problem. After we came screeching into the studio parking lot and hurried over to the door, we found that it was locked.
We pounded on it.
No one answered.
Finally McNally found a buzzer and pressed it.
“Password?” asked a mechanical-sounding voice.
“We don’t have a password!” roared McNally. “We have an emergency!”
“That is not correct,” said the voice. “Admission denied.”
McNally said some very bad words.
Then he kicked the door.
“Leave the premises, or authorities will be summoned,” said the voice.
“I am an authority!” screamed McNally.
>
Pleskit was starting to tremble. He looked truly terrified.
And then I saw the answer to our problem—or at least a potential answer. All we had to do was hope that guilt would work in our favor.
CHAPTER 24 [PLESKIT]
FACE-TO-FACE
“Look!” cried Tim. “It’s Kitty James!”
I was so distressed about being locked out of the studio that at first I did not know what he was talking about. Then I remembered who Kitty James was—that terrible woman who had interviewed me in such a friendly way, then betrayed me by broadcasting the scene of me laughing when McNally asked if Jordan was dead.
“I do not want to see her!”
“But she works here!” cried Tim. “She can get us in.”
“Why would she do that?” I asked.
“Because it’s a story. Besides, she owes you a favor.”
Before I could say anything, he rushed over to Kitty James and started talking to her.
“Sure, I can get you in,” she said when she came over to the door. “Trade. I get you in, you grant me another exclusive interview.”
“After what you did to me last time?” I cried.
She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Oh, all right. I guess I owe you one. I’ll get you in. You can decide on your own if you want to do the interview or not.”
Leaning close to the door, she said, “Kitty James. 8641. Baconbreath.” It clicked, and she pushed on it. The door opened into a small room with two stairways and three doors leading out of it.
I groaned. “Which way now?”
McNally grabbed Kitty James by the arm. “Get us to the room where Meenom and Hargis are debating, and I guarantee you’ll be on the scene for the biggest story of the year.”
“It’s a deal!” she said. She started down the center hall.
“Faster!” cried McNally.
Kitty started to run. We followed her, bolting wildly through the studio corridors. Three times someone tried to stop us. Each time McNally shouted, “Security!” and flashed his badge.
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