by Geoff Rodkey
“Please hurry,” said Hooree. “You are making me late for my nutrition.”
As I trotted down the hall, I tried to sort out what had just happened with my teacher. He definitely seemed like he wanted to help me. But he just as definitely didn’t want Hooree and the soldier to hear him.
And what kind of presentation did he want me to make? A lecture? A video? About what, exactly? I had no idea.
We turned the corner at the end of the hall and entered an enormous room, open all the way to the skylight. It was buzzing with the noise of a couple thousand Zhuri kids, half of them in midair, all talking and flitting their wings. When I walked in, the ones closest to the door turned their heads to stare at me.
A second later, the fear smell hit my nose.
I looked around, trying to ignore the stares and the stink. Along the right-hand wall was a long, troughlike sink with a dozen faucets. The Zhuri stood in lines at each faucet, waiting to draw tall cups of their gross-tasting liquid food from them. The ones who’d already gotten their food sipped it through their long, needlelike mouths.
At the far end of the room was a big group of a few hundred Krik, all sitting together. Near the edge of the Krik group was a lone, gigantic Ororo. She was so big and blobby that from a distance I couldn’t tell if she was standing or sitting.
Hooree pointed to the left-hand wall. “Your sister is over there,” he said.
I could’ve found Ila just by following the stink of fear. She was sitting in the near corner, surrounded by a dozen empty stools, with only Iruu and her armed soldier for company.
Her face was pale, and she looked upset. When she saw me coming, she burst into tears.
“Hey, hey, hey.” I moved quickly to an empty stool beside her and put my arm around her in a hug. She started to sob against my shoulder.
“It’s okay. Really. Don’t cry. It’s okay.” I felt like there’d already been more than enough bawling for one day.
“It’s not okay,” she said through her tears. “They hate us.”
“Does she wish to eat food?” Iruu asked. “I have tried to help her, but she will not use her translator. And she keeps making body garbage with her eyes.”
“This is not appropriate,” Hooree whined. “It should not be making its body garbage in our lunchroom.”
“It’s not body garbage,” I told him. “It’s tears. That’s just how humans show they’re sad.”
“It looks like body garbage to me. It is disgusting.”
Why did they give me a guide who’s such a jerk? I had to practically bite my tongue to stop myself from snapping at Hooree.
Iruu was much more kind. “Does she wish to eat food?” he asked again.
“Where’s your lunch?” I asked Ila. Before we left for school that morning, we’d packed most of the leftover Ororo food into some old Chow containers.
“In the bag.” Her bag was at her feet. I found her lunch inside it, along with her screen and earpiece. I handed her the lunch.
“Eat some of this. C’mon. It’s delicious. You’ll feel better.”
“I have to go get my nutrition,” Hooree announced. “Otherwise I will not have time to eat.”
He flitted off. Iruu rubbed his wings together and looked conflicted—or at least I thought he did. It was tough for me to read the Zhuri’s moods.
“You should go too, if you need food,” I told Iruu. “We’ll be fine.”
He leaned in toward Ila. “Do not worry, Ila human,” he said. “No one here will make disagreement on your face. We are peaceful.”
Ila didn’t say anything, but she managed a nod.
“Thanks, Iruu,” I said. “We really appreciate it.”
“You are welcome, Lan human. I will return as soon as I fetch my nutrition.” He flitted off after Hooree, leaving us alone with our two guards. I managed to get Ila to start eating.
“We have to leave,” she said miserably. “This is never going to work.”
“It’s just the first day.”
“Do you smell how much they hate us?”
“That’s just fear. Once they get to know us—”
“No, Lan—it’s anger.” She was right, sort of—underneath all the sour-milk stink was a faint but clear gasoline smell.
“The anger’s not as bad. And that’ll get better too. They just have to get to know us. My teacher’s actually really nice.”
“Mine isn’t.”
Her negativity made me clench my teeth in frustration. “Ila, we have to try.” I bent over to fetch her screen and earpiece from her bag. “Here, why don’t you turn your translator back on and—”
“MRRRRRRUUMMMMMRRRRMMM.”
I was still looking down at Ila’s bag when the light suddenly dimmed, like something enormous had stepped in between me and the skylight.
Looking up, I found myself staring into a white-blue wall of velvety flesh. It rippled with leftover movement, like a pond after a rock had been thrown into it.
I heard Ila gasp in fear as I looked up into the dark, wet eyes of the only Ororo in the room. From a distance, those eyes had looked sleepy. But at such close range, they were fierce.
“MMMRRRUUUUMMMMMM,” it said again, its voice so deep that I could feel its rumble through the floor. My translator beeped its “unknown language” warning.
Ila whimpered.
“Hello,” I said to the Ororo, trying to stay calm. “I’m sorry, but my translator can’t understand you.”
“MRRRMMMM.” Its tree trunk–thick arm rose from its side, and it held out its giant fleshy hand.
Did it want to shake my hand? Was that a thing the Ororo did? Or if I tried to shake it, would it think I was attacking and freak out?
“My name is Lan,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. I hoped it could understand the Zhuri translation coming out of my speaker clip.
“MRRRMMM!” It jiggled its open hand, making more ripples spread across its body.
“GRZZZRRKK!” The sudden noise made me jump in fright. There was a razor-toothed Krik standing next to the Ororo, practically underneath its arm.
Had that Krik been standing there the whole time?
“GZZZRRK!” The Krik was growling at me through its double row of teeth.
“Hello,” I said in a shaky voice. “My name is Lan.”
“ZZZRRKK!” The Krik pointed to Ila’s screen, which I was still holding. I realized that was why the Ororo had been holding its hand out.
I raised the screen to show the Ororo, keeping a tight grip with both hands. “This is for communicating. It translates for us, so we can speak Zhuri. And also understand it. Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“MRRRRMMM.” The Ororo shook its giant hand again.
“GZZRRK!” The Krik pointed to the screen, then to the Ororo’s hand.
“This one belongs to my sister,” I said. “And this is my sister! Her name is Ila.”
“Hello,” said Ila in a terrified whisper.
“MRRRMMMM.” The Ororo brought its hand down on the screen. It was warm, squishy, and so big that it covered not just the whole screen, but almost all of my hands too.
The Ororo tightened its grip. My heart was hammering against my chest.
I looked around for our guards. They were sitting a few feet away, casually sucking down their lunch and not making any move to get involved.
“Please help!” Ila cried to them. She didn’t have her translator on, but it was obvious what she was saying.
The soldiers kept eating, their weapons lying across their laps.
“Can you talk to them for us?” I begged the soldiers.
They just stared at me in response. “It is not our job to make translation,” one of them said.
We were on our own. The Ororo’s grip was getting tighter.
> “I’m sorry,” I told it, “but I can’t—”
“YEEEEHHEEEEEE!”
“GET AWAY FROM THE HUMANS!”
It was Hooree, back from fetching his liquid lunch. At his shriek, the Ororo relaxed its grip enough that I managed to snatch Ila’s screen back. I hugged it against my chest as all three of them—Hooree, the Ororo, and its little Krik sidekick—had a brief but loud argument.
“Leave them alone! You are not wanted here!”
“MRRMMMRR.”
“GZZZRRKK!”
“No! I am its guide! Get away from here, criminal!”
“MRRRMM.”
“ZZRKZZRRK!”
The Ororo gave up, turning and lumbering away. The Krik let out a final growl, then followed its partner as Iruu returned.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Marf the criminal tried to steal the human’s translator screen,” said Hooree.
I watched the Ororo head back to the Krik section of the cafeteria. As big as it was, it somehow managed to cross the floor so fast that its little green sidekick had to work its short legs double time to keep up.
“The Ororo’s a criminal?” I asked.
“She is a terrible criminal,” said Hooree. “Everyone agrees she should be expelled from our school. But she is too smart for the learning specialists to catch her.”
“Is that Krik a criminal too?”
“He probably is,” said Iruu. “Otherwise it does not make sense that they are friends.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because Ororo would never spend time with Krik. The Krik like to eat them.”
I thought back to all the food-related questions the Krik in my class had asked. “Would Krik eat humans?”
“Maybe,” said Iruu.
“If you wriggled a lot while they ate you, they would definitely like that,” Hooree added.
Ila clutched my hand in hers. “We can’t stay on this planet,” she whispered.
I gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “We’re going to be okay.”
But I didn’t really believe it.
I SOMEHOW MADE it through the rest of the day without getting eaten, attacked, or so upset that I burst into tears. When school ended, Hooree and I met Iruu and Ila in the lobby, and they walked us with our guards to an unmanned pod in front of the entrance. There was still a cluster of about fifty Zhuri protestors on the far side of the fence, and they chanted “HUMANS GO HOME!” until we flew out of hearing range.
Ila and I both shut our translators off. The two guards were still with us, but we’d given up even trying to talk to them.
“For a first day, it could’ve been worse,” I said.
My sister didn’t say anything. She just lay down across one of the benches that lined the pod walls, curled up in a ball, and shut her eyes.
I checked my screen. There was a message from Naya.
How’s it going? Are you a good doggie? Send me video!
Mom had warned us that since people up on the ship were desperate and scared, we should only send messages that were hopeful. I typed in a short reply:
It’s great! First day of school just ended, and nobody’s eaten me yet! Will send vid soon.
That was about as hopeful as I could manage. Then I messaged Mom and Dad on their screens:
School over. Heading home. How are you guys doing?
Neither of them answered, so I stared out the window for a while and tried to think of a good video message to record for Naya. The two I’d sent so far were so bland and chirpy—Look at this beautiful red grass and green sky! The air smells so good! We’re having some government officials over for dinner! Ruff, ruff!—that I was worried if I didn’t send her something funny, she’d think I was either brainwashed or lying.
The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to be funny and hopeful at the same time.
I was still racking my brain about it when I saw the protestors. There were dozens of them outside the fence at the edge of our subdivision. When our pod passed overhead, they flitted into the air and started their usual “HUMANS GO HOME!” chant. The noise of the fence crossing woke Ila, and she moaned when she heard the chant.
Inside the house with the door closed, we could still hear them in the distance. Ila shuffled off to her room. “I’m going to bed.”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon! You want to play a game? Watch some Birdleys?”
Instead of answering, she shut the door. When I went in after her, she was already lying in bed.
“Ila, c’mon. Don’t go to your dark place.”
“Leave me alone!”
I gave up and left her to sulk, closing the bedroom door behind me. Then I went to the kitchen in search of Ororo food, but there was nothing except Chow. Mom and Dad must’ve taken the last of the leftovers with them for their lunches.
I messaged them again, then flopped down on the Ororo-sized couch. After our beds, the couch was the best piece of furniture in the house. It wasn’t low to the floor like the beds, so you practically had to climb onto it. Once you did, the big plush cushions swallowed you up and gently massaged you. It was like floating in a warm pond filled with very friendly, slightly grabby fish.
I was starting to doze off when I heard the boom of a pod crossing the fence. I got up and looked out the window, expecting to see Mom and Dad coming home in one of the usual pill-shaped beige pods.
But the pod coming in for a landing was a whole other thing: gleaming silver chrome, dagger-shaped and sleek, with little winglike flourishes that reminded me of the tail fins on antique cars back on Earth. It looked twice as fast and ten times as expensive as the usual pods.
After it touched down in front of our house, its door hovered open dramatically, and an Ororo and a Krik emerged. At the sight of them, I sucked in my breath. They looked like the same pair who’d tried to steal Ila’s screen at lunch.
For a second I thought about pretending nobody was home. But Hooree had said they were criminals, and I figured my odds were better if I met them at the door, where there were two armed guards. I doubted the guards would actually help me, but I was hoping they’d at least make the criminals think twice.
As the visitors approached, I threw the door open and stood in the middle of the doorway, trying not to look as scared as I felt.
“MRRRRMMMMMRRRMM.”
“GZZZZZRRRK!”
“Sirs,” I asked the guards, “can you please tell me what they’re saying?”
“They say they are here to fix your translator,” one of them explained.
“Did someone ask them to fix my translator?”
“They must have gotten approval from the government,” the second one told me. “Otherwise their pod would have crashed when it crossed the fence.”
“Can you ask who sent them here?”
“It is not our job to translate for you,” said the first guard.
“MRRRMMMMM.” The Ororo barreled right at me. I had to step back and let her in, or I would’ve gotten flattened.
The Krik followed her inside and shut the door. At that point, the guards couldn’t hear me anymore unless I screamed. And even then, they might not help.
“MRRMMMMM.” The Ororo held out her giant hand like she’d done in the cafeteria, beckoning for me to give her my screen.
“I need this to communicate,” I told her. “It’s precious. If I don’t have it, I can’t understand the Zhuri.”
“MRRRMMMMM.”
“GZZZRK!”
“There are engineers up on the human ship,” I said. “They’re working to fix the translator so it can understand you. They think in a couple of weeks it’ll be ready. Maybe you could come back then?”
The Ororo clamped her hand down on mine. This time she wasn’t going to take no for
an answer. And between her giant size and the Krik’s sharp teeth, putting up a fight seemed hopeless.
I gave up and let her have the screen. “Please be careful with it,” I begged as she flipped it over in her hand, examining it closely with her dark liquid eyes.
The Krik peeked over the side of the Ororo’s giant arm to stare at the screen too. His mouth hung open a little, the razor-sharp teeth glistening with spit.
“MRRMMM.” The Ororo walked over to the dining table and put down my screen. Ila had left her own screen on the table, and when I saw it lying there, I worried the Ororo would snatch it too.
Instead she pushed it aside. Then she sat down on one of the wide, low chairs.
The Krik hopped up onto the chair next to her. He was carrying a small satchel, and when he opened it, I got a glimpse of all sorts of complicated-looking tech inside.
He pulled out two skeletal tools that looked like robotic hands and handed them to the Ororo. She flipped my screen over so its back was facing up, and in movements so quick they were practically a blur, she used the tools to pull off the back of the screen. Long, needlelike extensions telescoped out from the tips of the mechanical fingers, and she plunged them into the screen’s hardware.
“Please don’t do that!” I practically screamed as a sudden crackle of static burst through my earpiece.
She ignored me, digging into the screen’s guts with the needle ends of both robotic hands. The static in my ear was so loud that I had to pull the earpiece out. I wondered if I should go back to the guards outside and ask them to call the police for me. But I suspected the guards actually were the police—and if so, they weren’t interested in taking my side.
I considered calling out for Ila, but the fact that she hadn’t come out already made me think she must be either asleep or hiding. Either way, she wouldn’t be much help.
After a minute of rooting around, the Ororo turned the screen so the front was facing her. Numbers and letters of human code cascaded down the display. She watched them closely as she kept digging into the back with the needles.