Escape from the Pipe Men!

by Mary G. Thompson

  “I will, of course.”

  “It poked our dad with its nose,” said Becky. She leaned over me and stuck her face right in Gript’s. “If you’re going to carry those things around with you everywhere, you should carry the cure, too!”

  “Becky, he doesn’t speak English. Anyway, they were kidnapped. How were they supposed to plan for that?”

  “They were on O-thul-ba when they were kidnapped. They should have had the cure with them!”

  I sighed. I turned to Gript, purposely not translating everything. “You were on O-thul-ba when they were kidnapped, right?”

  Gript nodded and wiped tears from his face with the backs of his paws. “I trade with the Masters. My pack grows a spice very rare in the universe. The only known source is in this system, a cold planet farthest from our sun. Far beneath the surface, there is a cave, made warm by the presence of rare radioactive minerals. The spice grows there. And the Masters like it in their soup.

  “I wanted to take my children with me for the first time. My grown children, Hipptu and Scrappta, they were to take over the transport business. For my younger children, it was a chance to see the universe. We left the spaceport to see the city. I looked away for only a second, to watch an assistant pouring soup. When I turned back around, my children were far in the distance, being dragged away in a rolling cage. Six square holes like eyes for windows. Hipptu’s eyes were staring through the lowest one.” Gript pursed his pale lips and wrung his paws, shaking.

  “The Pipe Men kidnapped them right off the street,” I said to Becky. “What did you do?”

  “You must understand, we do not do well alone.” Gript sat down slowly onto the bench and gave a loud sniff. “We evolved in packs. We even speak as one. When we are together, we are strong. It took many years for me to handle the constant travel to O-thul-ba, with only a few fellows to combine with.” He sniffed again. “My children are not trained for this.”

  As Gript had been speaking, the other Brocine had begun crowding around. Now they climbed on top of one another, surrounding him. Brocine on either side of him held his soggy-from-tears paws. Something changed about them. They were standing close together, all holding paws now. A sea of yellow eyes looked at me sadly, watering as though with one thought.

  “This is how we should be,” said a deep voice. It was coming from the pack somehow, but I didn’t see a mouth move, and I couldn’t pinpoint the source of the sound. It was coming from all of them at once. “Our children are lost. They will die if they do not come home.”

  “That’s why we came here,” I said. “We can save our parent and your family too.”

  “Not with our calculator,” said Tast-e. He was standing, straight and soggy, to my right, glaring pointedly at me. He turned his gaze to the pack. “This from has agreed to give the calculator to us. If you wish to undertake this mission, you can do it by spaceship.”

  “No!” I said. That had been the plan at the beginning, when I hadn’t known that the calculator could open portals. But Front had told me that I had to leave Brock by portal. I still didn’t know why, but I’d already betrayed Front’s trust enough. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  Tast-e stuck his nose in my face. “Should we have left you with the Xaxor?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Without the Hottini, Becky and I would have been sold to the highest bidder. But what was to say that the Hottini wouldn’t have done that, too? They hadn’t proved to be trustworthy.

  “This from must return to us,” said a deep voice. “The calculator is ours.” It came from the pack that had welcomed us to the feast.

  “I didn’t agree to stay here,” I said. I glanced at Tast-e. His imperious glare helped me make my decision. I turned to the new pack. “But I said I’d give you the calculator, and I will.” I’d just have to think of some way out of it later. I hated to lie to these people, but I had to get the antidote. Mom couldn’t say I was doing the wrong thing. No one could.

  “If only you can use it, you must return,” the pack said.

  I looked at Gript’s pack to see if Gript and his friends would protest, but they were silent. The chain of Brocine paws now stretched from Gript’s group to the other, so that they now appeared to be speaking with only one voice.

  I thought quickly. “Not until I know my parent is safe, and if you help my family escape to anywhere we want to go.” I glared at Tast-e. “That’s what the Hottini were supposed to do. Then if I haven’t figured out how to make it work for you, I’ll come back.” Was there something else? Something I was forgetting? “And the Xaxor! You have to take it home, and don’t let the Hottini have it.”

  Tast-e was glaring purple lasers at me.

  “Drink, then! We will go tomorrow!” The combined pack dissolved into a melee of Brocine, who scampered toward the tables and eagerly resumed their meals.

  I turned back to the group of Brocine in front of me. Now there were only Gript and a few others, still holding paws.

  “We will both find our families,” said Gript, in his own, small voice. Being in the pack seemed to have helped him regain his composure, and he was no longer crying or shaking.

  “We will,” I said. “I promise.” I wondered how much each individual Brocine had to do with what the pack said. Should I blame Gript for all of them trying to take my calculator?

  Gript gave me a nod and jumped down off the bench, disappearing into the crowd.

  “Did you understand that?” I asked Becky.

  “Not everything, but they said they want you to stay here. You can’t!” She pounded a fist on the table, knocking something soft and star-shaped out of her bowl.

  “I’m not going to,” I said. “But it’s not like we can just trick them and run off. The Hottini aren’t going to give up, and Front made me promise not to give the calculator to anyone. And what if the Pipe Men really are angry and we do have to escape? We’re going to need somebody’s help. So I might have to trade the calculator to the Brocine. But it won’t work without me!” I rubbed my head with my hands in frustration.

  “Are you experiencing difficulty in completing your task, Ry-an?” asked Tast-e, smirking. He glared at the Brocine to my left, who scurried aside to let him sit, and stuffed his hind legs comically under the table, pulling his front boots off with his teeth.

  “What’s your task?” I snapped. “To get me back on your ship and put me in a cell?”

  “You should not have made the same bargain with two powerful races,” Tast-e observed.

  I had nothing to say to that.

  Twenty-Two

  “THERE’S NOTHING ON BUT RAT STUFF,” said Becky. She sat on her cot, a makeshift combination of tiny little mattresses, apparently each designed for a single Brocine, and punched the tiny metal screen. The channel changed, but only to another dim view of a wet cave.

  “Well, we’re on their planet,” I said, rolling over. My cot was lumpy, but it was soft enough. After everything I’d been through, I probably could have slept anywhere.

  “We get all sorts of stuff at home.”

  “Ip said there weren’t any portals,” I said. “We never got any Brocine TV at home either, did we?”

  “Thank goodness.” She poked a button, and the tiny screen went black.

  I sat up on my cot and rubbed my eyes. We were in a warm, dry room aboveground, with a window. Last night it had been too dark to see, but now I saw a wet, lush landscape. Yellow treelike plants with long, dangling limbs hung over red grass and orange bushes. The sky was cloudy, but I could see the tinge of red sky through them. It was nice to see the rain dripping down the outside of the window instead of onto us.

  “We don’t have time to watch TV anyway,” I said. “We have to talk before they come back. You know we’re going back to O-thul-ba today, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, well, I’m not sure where the portal’s going to open. I mean, the calculator has been used there. Before Front took it from the Pipe Men, and then again when we w
ere running around in the passageway with all the doors. I’m pretty sure I figured out which one it is.” I turned the calculator on, and the time stamps popped onto the screen. I breathed a sigh of relief. Since it had gotten wet, I hadn’t been sure it would keep working. Our food had been completely ruined. I pointed to the times and dates. “See? They’re pretty regular, like the Pipe Men were exploring the portals with it. Remember those Pipe Men Ip ran into? So every other one must be O-thul-ba.”

  She peered at it from under my arm. “No, those ones are for the passage.”

  “Well, the passage is on O-thul-ba.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s an interdimensional spaceport. It isn’t anywhere.”

  I thought about it. She was right that the passage wasn’t on O-thul-ba. You always had to go through a portal to get there. “But it has to be somewhere,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because . . .” I had to think about it. “Because everywhere is somewhere.”

  “We weren’t.” She was looking at me solemnly.

  “We weren’t where?”

  “Anywhere. We were in the space between all points.”

  “Where are you getting this from? Anyway, we had air to breathe. There isn’t air in nowhere.”

  “From Bre-zon-air. I was only supposed to be learning how to add.” She rolled her eyes. “He thinks I’m stupid because I don’t speak Pipe Man, but I understand the math. The air is only as much there as you are.”

  I knew I was never going to catch up with my little sister on this, and I really didn’t care whether the place was anywhere, as long as we could go there. “Well, we have to go back to the passage and find our way to the right door then. I can’t be sure which one is O-thul-ba just from this.”

  “You have to know what number to start with,” said Becky. “Remember how Front made you put in 44? And then you put in 1064? This door will be unknown.”

  “Unknown?”

  “It’s like you said—there aren’t supposed to be any portals to here. There really is one, but it doesn’t have a number yet.”

  “It isn’t there yet,” I said. “I’m going to make it.”

  Becky giggled. “Ry-an!”

  “What?” I was starting to get frustrated. I just wanted to go there.

  “All the doors are there. It’s the space between all places.”

  “Well, if you’re so smart, tell me what number this already there door is going be and then tell me what number the zoo is so we can get back there!” I didn’t mean to yell, but it came out that way.

  Becky sat back down on her cot with a crash and turned the TV on with an angry poke.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” I sat down next to her. “I really do need your help.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she pouted. “I don’t even speak Pipe Man. Nobody tells me what’s going on.”

  “Hey,” I tried to put my arm around her, but she flung it off. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to translate more. It’s just, everything’s been happening so fast.”

  Just then, a trapdoor popped open right next to my feet. A Brocine nose appeared, and then the entire Brocine. I recognized him by the shape of his ears.

  “Gript!”

  “Sorry to bother you,” said Gript, closing the trapdoor with his front paws, “but the suns are rising and . . . oh, my moons.” Before I knew what he was doing, he had climbed my leg and was standing on my knee. “The calculator!” He reached out a paw and hesitated reverently without touching it.

  I pulled it back.

  “Don’t worry, Earth,” said Gript. “I wouldn’t want to hurt it.” He stood still on my leg, staring. His claws dug into my leg.

  I squirmed.

  “Oh, I am infinitely sorry!” Gript jumped off my leg and landed on the mattress between Becky and me.

  “I am infinitely sorry!” said Becky, and grinned at the Brocine. “Would you like some soup?”

  “Yes, please and thank you.” Gript grinned back, showing his sharp teeth. Before I could say anything, he turned back to me, solemn again. “You must understand, Earth. The calculator is not just a way for me to find my family, or for the Brocine to retrieve their honor from the Masters’ zoo. It is a way for us to travel to distant worlds, trade with many people, free of the Masters. The technology inside it will free the universe.”

  So Gript did agree with the others about stealing the calculator from me. Was there anyone at all I could trust?

  I sighed. “Are you sure you don’t want to control everything, just like the Masters?” I pictured Front’s antennae reaching toward me, his faces solemn as he made me promise not to give the calculator away.

  “We will build tunnels to all places. Trade will be free. Kidnapping will be outlawed.” Gript flexed his claws, and his ears shook.

  “What’s he saying?” asked Becky, poking me.

  “They want the calculator because then they’ll be in control.”

  “I like him.” She patted Gript on the head.

  “You liked the Xaxor, too, before it tried to sell us,” I said.

  Becky glared at me.

  Gript turned toward her and flashed his sharp-toothed smile again. His ears stopped shaking quite so much.

  A tiny door on the far side of the little room burst open. I had a dim memory of crawling through it the night before, so tired it had been almost torture to put hand in front of knee. They’d said this was one of their “big-guest” rooms. Ten Brocine now poured through the door. They were wearing uniforms, noses pointed straight ahead, each holding in one arm something that looked dangerously like a gun.

  “I agreed to do this,” I said. “I need this as much as you do.”

  “They are not here to guard you,” said Gript. “They are the rescue mission.”

  “Only these?” The ten little creatures against all the Pipe Men and their assistants?

  “These are the very best. You think we are too small?” He wiggled his barbed nose at me, then waved the Brocine soldiers forward. They came at a march and climbed, one by one, onto the mattress between Becky and me. She smiled at them, but they didn’t react. Their noses seemed particularly sharp, their eyes particularly hard.

  I waited, but they just stood there.

  Gript, at the front of the pack of soldiers, looked up at me and pointed at the calculator. “To O-thul-ba!”

  I don’t know why I had expected us to go somewhere else, some official launching place, maybe a spaceport, but I had. I hadn’t expected to go so soon, with so little fanfare, barely having woken up. I glanced at Becky, everything she’d said about the passage running through my head. I still didn’t know which number the portal I was about to make would have. We could get hopelessly lost in the passage, this space between all points, us and a bunch of Brocine, just waiting for the Pipe Men to find us. Or worse, what if nobody found us? I needed time to think about it, work it all out.

  “I think the calculator will create a number, once you open the door,” said Becky.

  “You think?”

  “Well, how else do the Pipe Men do it?”

  It made sense, but that almost worried me. Making sense wasn’t like bok, at least not for me.

  “And Ip said that Mom and Dad’s closet is 2159. We can go home and then go through our living room closet to our zoo sector on O-thul-ba.”

  I almost laughed. We could get there from home! We had a portal right there in our house that went straight to O-thul-ba and never changed. As soon as this was all over and we were all safe, I was going to make Becky about a thousand cakes.

  Becky tugged on my sleeve. “The cure,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe I had forgotten. “The antidote! Where is it? I’m not doing this without the antidote,” I said.

  Gript pulled a tiny syringe out of his tiny jacket. It was no bigger than an eyedropper.

  “That’s going to cure him? Completely?”

 
Gript put it back in his pocket. “It’s worked on every other from.”

  That had to be good enough. “Okay,” I said, reaching for Becky’s hand, “you stay with me. No running off into random doors.” I turned to Gript. “Give it to me.”

  “You promise to get us to our people?” Gript stared up at me, eyes beginning to water.

  “I promise,” I said, and I meant it. No matter what the Brocine pack was planning to do to me, Gript’s children didn’t deserve to have been kidnapped and forced to live in a zoo sector. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like, not being able to go home. “I’ve never been to the Brocine sector, but I think I can find it.”

  Gript nodded. “I will be infinitely grateful.” He looked into my eyes for a few long seconds, then pulled out the antidote again.

  I took it and held it out to Becky. “The Pipe Men aren’t going to watch you as closely,” I said. “You need to hold on to this, in case they take me away and don’t let me see him.”

  She took it from me and put it in her pocket. Then her eyes started to water and her lip quivered.

  “It’s going to be fine,” I said, squeezing her hand. “It’s just in case.”

  She started to giggle. “Pretty good, huh?”

  I couldn’t help smiling, but it didn’t last long. “You keep it up. You keep it up until they let you see him. If we do get separated, I’ll be coming back. I’ll find a way to get you all out of there. If we have to escape, it will be all of us. You, me, Mom, and Dad.” I tried not to look at Gript and the Brocine soldiers—tried not to think about the fact that they expected me to come back here. Or about where we would really go. I couldn’t worry about all that yet.

  Becky nodded, solemn again. “I’ll tell them. We’ll wait for you.”

  I squeezed Becky’s hand, then released it, held the calculator in front of me, and touched the screen.

  A black, rectangular portal appeared in front of us. I glanced back at the Brocine.

  Gript nodded at me.

  I took a step forward.