Escape from the Pipe Men!

by Mary G. Thompson

  “A kind of telepathy. I didn’t know I could do it until the Pipe Men came.”

  “That’s amazing. I’m Ryan, and this is my sister Becky. I’m sorry we dropped in on you like this.”

  “Oh, no,” said the creature. “It’s my pleasure. I don’t often get visitors. Other than the Pipe Men, of course.”

  “Do you have a zoo sector too?” asked Becky.

  “Oh, yes,” said the creature. “A rubbery, poor imitation of Frontringhor, I’m afraid.” The tone could have been bitter, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Do you ever get to go into the passage?” Becky asked.

  The creature pulled forward toward us, revealing a short, thin neck, followed by an eel-like body, which grew gradually bigger around. The end of it remained in darkness. The head pulled forward toward the door, sticking its antennae out so that they almost touched the blackness. Its smile twisted. “I would like to visit other places,” it said.

  “Why don’t you?” Becky asked.

  “The Pipe Men won’t let me, Becky. You see, I am the only one of my kind. They do not want to risk losing me.”

  “But if you’re the only one, then who do you talk to?” I asked.

  “I talk to the Pipe Men who come see me. Occasionally, other froms visit my sector.” It lifted its antennae until they were at the same level as my eyes. “I would like to talk to others. It is a curse, to know I can talk to anyone in any language, but to be stuck here.”

  “We’ll talk to you,” said Becky. “Now that we know you’re here, we’ll come back.”

  The creature slid its antennae partway back down, until they were on Becky’s level. “Thank you, Becky. That is very nice of you. I hope you will truly do it.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “I don’t have a name,” it said. “I’m just the from from Frontringhor.”

  “We could call you Mr. Frontringhor,” said Becky.

  “Or just Front,” I said.

  “Call me what you want,” said the creature. “But tell me why you’ve come here. I know the Pipe Men do not let the Earth children walk around.”

  “We’re hiding,” I said. “It’s a long story. But we have to get somewhere without the Pipe Men knowing.”

  “I suspected as much.” The creature pulled its antennae back to what I assumed was their normal level. “Well, I won’t give you away. The Pipe Men are my jailers, not my friends.”

  Before today, I had never thought about the fact that we really were captives, or wondered how the other froms in the zoo felt about it. The zoo on O-thul-ba was still more my home than Earth was. What if I never got to see it again? That would be worse for me than being cut off from Earth. I forced myself to focus. One thing was clear. Front felt trapped, and he might be able to help us. I suddenly got an idea. “Do you understand bok?”

  The creature smiled. “I understand it.”

  “Can you help us? We have to find the right door.” I wasn’t going to let on to Becky, but I wasn’t sure that Ip could really get us where we were going. If he was even still in the passage. That Pipe Man could have taken him away, or scared him enough so that he ran off on his own. I just hoped he wasn’t getting punished because of us.

  “Follow me,” said Front. He pulled his head backward and disappeared into the darkness.

  I took a deep breath and looked at Becky. She smiled widely. To her, this whole thing was probably one big adventure. I gripped her hand tighter and took a step. As I moved, I could see a little farther. The light was increasing, slowly but surely.

  “I hope the light makes it easier for you,” Front said from the darkness.

  I took another step, and the cave began to really brighten. There were more boulders and, between them, Front’s body, which extended back into the distance, all the way out of the cave and into the landscape. As it extended, it grew to at least five feet wide, so big that I couldn’t have reached my arms across Front’s back. I couldn’t see the end of him.

  “Another obstacle to me leaving,” said Front, “as you can see.”

  Ten

  I HELD ON TO BECKY’S HAND and led her between the boulders. The closer we got to the cave entrance, the more I could feel a strong, wet breeze. The brightness around us seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, but I didn’t see any source for it. Outside, the Frontringhor landscape was still shrouded in semidarkness. Front’s head was waiting for us at the entrance, but I still couldn’t see the end of him.

  “I know your eyes will not be able to see far, but my home is really a very beautiful planet.”

  There was just enough light coming from the cave, and from some faint glow far off in the distance, for me to see that the landscape was made up of short hills covered by low vegetation. There were pockets of shininess that might have been ponds or bogs. I wondered if I would sink up to my knees when I stepped out of the cave.

  “Is it solid?” I asked.

  “If you stay behind my body, I will lead you over safe ground.” Front slowly slid backward, leaving a path for us to walk on.

  “Are there any animals?” asked Becky.

  “I have never seen any,” said Front.

  “Then what do you eat?”

  “How did you evolve?” I asked at the same time.

  Front smiled his toothless smile. “I do not eat as you do. What I need is in the air and the water and the land. My planet and I are tied together, like two parts of one being.”

  “Does that mean it would hurt to leave?” asked Becky.

  Front closed his mouth so that he was no longer smiling. “Yes. But not nearly as much as it hurts to stay.”

  “Do the Pipe Men hurt you?” she asked.

  Front didn’t answer. We walked in silence for a minute.

  “We’re not supposed to go out,” said Becky, “but I don’t want to. Earth people are mean.”

  “You don’t seem mean to me,” said Front, smiling again.

  “We’re not! We’re better than regular Earth people.”

  It disturbed me that Becky said that, but I wasn’t sure why. That was what both the Pipe Men and our parents had taught us, that we were better than other Earth people because the Pipe Men had chosen us. That we were smarter because we learned from the Pipe Men. But the Pipe Men could have come through any other closet. Was there really something different about us?

  “The Pipe Men said that to me, too,” said Front. “A long time ago, when they first came.”

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “They said that I was better than the other Frontringhor people because they had chosen me. When I told them that I was the only one, they told me that I was better than all the others in the universe that they had not chosen.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Ryan. I have never met a from they have not chosen.”

  The ground beneath our feet was squooshy, but not in the same way as O-thul-ba. The ground on O-thul-ba was artificial, created out of their rubbery fabric for reasons only the Pipe Men knew. The Frontringhor ground was soft because it was saturated with water, growing with life. My Id-won hide boots had never walked on natural ground before. In the distance we walked, the landscape in front of us did not change. I glanced behind us and saw the cave we had come from, embedded in a hill that, once we were away from it, did not seem much larger than the others. Only the light still coming from the cave mouth made it stand out.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To get something you need. We are here.”

  We were at another cave entrance. It was not big enough for us to walk into, since the thickest part of Front’s body was already in it. Without another word, Front rolled his head over the top of his body, back into the blackness. I hesitated for a second, trying to see into the darkness. Then a faint glow began to build. What I saw made me jump and pull Becky backward.

  She shrieked in surprise.

  Front’s head was no longer visible.
It had folded back over itself like a bent hot dog. The beginning of the body also disappeared into the darkness of the cave, and the body rolled over itself so that another part of the body came into view from underneath. Front’s body rolled and rolled for what seemed like several minutes. Then his head suddenly appeared again, rolling up off the ground. The head slid toward us, letting the last revolution of the body slowly fade away into the darkened cave. His mouth was full of something, and he thrust it toward me.

  I recognized it as the device the Pipe Men had been carrying when they’d led us back to Earth—the calculator Ip had mentioned. I reached out for it and took it from the creature’s mouth, trying not to notice the slight coating of saliva. The device was oddly shaped, made of some kind of synthetic material. It was small enough to hold in one hand, but its edges were jagged, as if it had been dropped and broken. It was the color of stone, and it didn’t appear to have any buttons or screen at all.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you,” said Front, turning his antennae to Becky. “I suppose I seem very strange to you.”

  “How did you do that?” Becky leaned forward, trying see over Front’s body and into the cave. Just at the edge of the darkness was the outline of more of Front’s body, coiled and piled on itself.

  “It comes naturally to me.”

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  “From my sector,” said Front. He stretched his head forward, elongating his neck, stretching it out two feet, then three. “My body can’t go through the door, but my head can make it to the glass.” Front smiled sadly as he let his head drop gently back.

  “This is a calculator?”

  “Push there.” Front moved one of his antennae to point at a jagged piece of material sticking out of the device’s side.

  I pushed it. It was soft under my finger. The top of the calculator began to glow. “Now what am I supposed to do with it?”

  “You have learned nothing about bok?”

  I shook my head.

  “Bok is how the Pipe Men are able to use the portals. Before they understood bok, they had to travel in spaceships, spending years in travel, never reaching anywhere. When they discovered bok, all that changed.” The tinge of bitterness edged Front’s voice again.

  “But what is it?”

  “It is a great deal more than even the Pipe Men know. At the basic level they understand, it is the sum of the uncertainties of the final variables of each integer.”

  “I don’t exactly understand final variables yet.” I frowned down at the device. I knew what Yel-to-tor would say. I should have been able to understand this.

  “Ryan’s not good at math,” said Becky, giggling.

  “For example,” said Front, “when you count to one hundred, bok gives you the chance that you’ll actually arrive there.”

  “How could I not arrive there?”

  “Often.”

  The calculator glowed at me, mocking me for my ignorance. “Look, I’m not going to learn this right now. Can you just show me how to use this thing to find the right door?”

  Front reached an antenna toward me so that it hovered over the calculator in my hand. I suddenly noticed that there were still two antennae sitting back near Front’s head. “You have three?”

  “This head does.”

  “Two heads! Ohmigosh! Are there more?” Becky leaned even farther into the cave, so that she was nearly climbing on Front’s back.

  “Becky, don’t go poking around!”

  Front’s second head smiled. “No, Becky, there are only two. One for each end.”

  “I wish I had two heads.” Becky came back toward us and patted Front just behind the head we saw.

  I held my breath, not sure if Front would be angry, but he merely pointed his first two antennae at her and continued smiling. His third antenna pressed the calculator where it was glowing. Suddenly, a screen appeared, which was divided into a grid.

  “The Pipe Men have named many of the doors in the passage with numbers. What door number are you looking for?”

  “1064,” I said.

  Front’s third antenna turned away from the screen and rose to the level of my face. “Why are you going to 1064?”

  “We’re trying to get to some spaceport,” I said. “On another part of O-thul-ba, outside the zoo.”

  “Outside the zoo.” Front’s antennae hovered. “You want to meet the Hottini.”

  “How did you know that?” I gasped.

  “I’m sorry,” said Front. “I didn’t mean to read your mind.”

  “What am I thinking?” Becky wrapped her arm around Front’s neck and put her face right in front of his.

  “Becky, stop it! We have to find this door!”

  Becky sat down on the ground and folded her arms.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry. Yes, the Hottini will be at the spaceport. We just have to find this door.”

  “The door you are at is number 44. When you go out, touch 44,” said Front.

  “44?” I asked. “But we were going from 2159 to 1064!”

  “Often the doors remain in order,” said Front. “But often they do not.”

  I sighed again. This was making my brain hurt. Where the screen had before been a blank grid, it was now filled with numbers in the Pipe Man script.

  “Then touch the number you want to get to, in this case, 1064. You can get to more numbers by rolling your finger along here.” Front touched his antenna to a series of small jagged points on top of the device. “It will take you along a path. You will see.”

  “What if I don’t understand it? Can’t I try it out somehow?”

  “It will be clear. Just make sure you check the door number before you go through it. They can change moment by moment.”

  “The one that goes from our sector to our house doesn’t change,” Becky said.

  “Becky—” I shut my mouth. She was right. Wasn’t she?

  Front lowered one of his antennae to her eye level. “The Pipe Men use a version of this technology to create portals that stay the same and that exist outside the passage.” He tapped the calculator with his first antenna. “They can make portals of any size if they have enough raw materials.” Front was no longer smiling.

  “That makes you sad,” said Becky.

  Front smiled again. “But you make me happy.” He turned two of his antennae to me. “Listen to your sister, Ryan. She has a natural talent.”

  Becky giggled and jumped to her feet. “I have a natural talent!”

  “Okay.” So she noticed things sometimes. I still wasn’t at all sure that it would be as easy as Front made it sound.

  “Do not let the Pipe Men catch you with this,” said Front. “If they do catch you, it did not come from me.”

  “Of course not. Thank you so much, Front. I wish you could come with us.”

  “Perhaps in time.”

  “We’ll come back and visit you.”

  “I would like that very much.” Front smiled wide, opening his mouth several inches. I was glad it was too dark to see inside. He pointed all three antennae at Becky. “You will visit, too, won’t you?”

  “Of course!” She threw her arms around the creature’s neck.

  We started walking, staying next to Front, careful not to step out into the bog. Becky kept her hand on Front’s back, and he didn’t seem to mind. It was not long before we were in the first cave, standing before the black door, which I now knew was number 44.

  “Goodbye, Front,” I said.

  “Goodbye, Ryan, Becky. I will see you again soon.”

  “Goodbye!” Becky hugged the giant alien again, and again, he smiled wide. It was only after I pushed Becky before me and took a glance back toward him that I saw his smile fade and his antennae, all three of them, droop down over his face.

  Eleven

  THERE WAS NO ONE in the passageway. I wondered where Ip was, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. We had to get to the door before anyone saw us.

  Becky pulled my arm like sh
e wanted to go.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “We have to do this here.” I looked down at the calculator. The screen was still glowing. The numbers did not appear to be exactly in order, but 44 was easy to pick out. I touched it with my finger; 44 blinked and then the numbers on the grid changed. I saw numbers in the hundreds, but 1064 was not on there. I scrolled like Front had shown me, and there it was. I pressed it.

  The screen changed from the grid filled with numbers to something else. There were lines going in all directions, nothing that seemed to resemble the passage I was standing in.

  “Let me see,” said Becky.

  “Shhh,” I whispered, but I showed it to her.

  “Here,” she said. She pointed toward the far right side of the screen.

  As I followed her finger, it suddenly clicked. Door 44 was at the bottom right-hand corner, and the passage went diagonally up the screen, toward the upper left-hand corner. The lines marking the passage were not solid, but were broken by gaps of different lengths. Other lines shot off in all directions and filled the screen in a seemingly random pattern, but a passage-shaped space remained in the middle, thicker in some places and thinner in others. I looked around at the doors, as if they might have moved and become irregular like the picture in front of me, but they looked the same as always. Large, black, rectangular gaps in space.

  A chill went through my body. I had never thought about how any of this worked before. I had just walked through a closet and been on O-thul-ba. It had been as normal to me as walking from one room to another in my house. But this was not normal. There was more here than I’d ever imagined.

  I started walking in the direction we’d been going before the Pipe Man had appeared. As I advanced, a tiny line appeared on the screen, moving with me.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “We have to move quickly.” Whether we were still near 44 or back between 2159 and 1064, we had a ways to go, so I set off at a brisk pace, almost running. At the same time, I tried to think of an excuse, a reason why we might be here, in case a Pipe Man came through one of the doors again. I decided to say that we were looking for the hospital, that we’d purposely ditched Ip so we could see our parents. It seemed reasonable. They’d just send us back to the zoo and have some Pipe Men watch over us. They’d have no reason to suspect we were trying to escape.