Escape from the Pipe Men!

by Mary G. Thompson

  “Becky?” It was too quiet. Whatever was going on, I was still tuned in to it, but I didn’t hear any more voices.

  Our Xaxor was suddenly next to me, waving two legs, pulling out its tablet with a third.

  The twine jerked, unrolling so quickly that the friction of the twine ball burned my hands, and I dropped it. The Xaxor caught it with one leg, and I quickly grabbed it again.

  “Gript? Are you all right?” I called.

  “Put them together,” said a strange voice in my head. A Pipe Man.

  “Honey, stop. Calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself. You could unbind its arms. It’s going to hurt itself.”

  Becky needs your help, the Xaxor typed.

  “You can hear it too?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I need you to hold Gript.”

  The Xaxor took the ball of twine and wrapped one leg around it several times. With two other legs, it hummed something to its fellows. The one with the calculator came forward.

  “I need to go back to our house,” I said. The portal in Mom and Dad’s closet was the only place I could start from to find the hospital. The four Xaxor hummed to each other, examining the calculator. Then one pressed a button, and a portal opened. “Thank you,” I said, jumping into it. As I was going, I realized that I wasn’t sure I could find the hospital, much less get back to the Brocine sector. But I couldn’t stop to let myself worry. I had to find Becky before something worse happened.

  Twenty-Nine

  NOTHING WAS RECOGNIZABLE. The doors weren’t all the same shape, weren’t even any shape. They swirled and changed and blended into each other, changing colors, from pure black to speckled with red, blue, green. The walls and floors melted into each other and pulsed, red globs moving and bubbling like baking dough. The floor shifted under me, and I fell, catching myself with my hands. The floor was warm, lifelike. I had no idea where in the passage I was.

  “Go forward, Ryan.”

  I crawled forward. The floor smoothed a little, as if it was trying to make way for me, but it kept bubbling. My hands and knees sank in, and it took a lot of effort to move.

  “Front?” I asked, struggling to breathe with the effort and with the heaviness of the air. I didn’t know how he could be here, but it was his voice.

  “I could not tell you before. I am sorry.”

  “What couldn’t you tell me? Where are you?” I was passing doors, but I wasn’t sure how many, the way they were all swirled up together. I couldn’t guess how far I’d gone.

  “You have helped me a great deal. I am close to being free.”

  “Front, please. I don’t understand what’s going on!”

  “I will explain it to you, but you must get to your family. I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In gaining my freedom, I have caused discord among the species of your known universe, and I have hurt you. I am sorry.”

  I didn’t have time to think about all this. “How do I get to the hospital?”

  “It will be three doors from here, on your left.”

  I got there. The wall seemed to be one long door of many swirling colors, but short, barely tall enough for me to crawl through. “Is this all one door?”

  “Just go forward.”

  I did as I was told, and I found myself staring at the mouth and bottom two eyes of a Pipe Man. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw at least two more. I didn’t have time to think. I just jumped forward and butted the first one with my head. It fell backward, landed with a thump, and rolled a little. I scrambled over it and got to my feet. The other two were coming toward me. I kicked one in the mouth and then the other. They fell on top of each other like Pick-up Sticks.

  I looked around, trying to get my bearings. I was in the hospital, the part where there were long, skinny beds for Pipe Men. There was a Pipe Man in one of the beds, but no one else. This room had been completely empty before, and there hadn’t been a portal here. I realized there wasn’t a portal here now either. Wherever I had come from, it was gone.

  The Pipe Man in the bed was covered in assistant wires. It was sitting up a little, though, bending at one crinkly spot in the middle, staring at me with ten blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry—I had to!” I said to it.

  The Pipe Men on the floor were rolling, and I heard buzzing. Wires were coming down, lowering methodically from their usual perches just beneath the ceiling. They came slowly toward the fallen Pipe Men, pulling extra wire from somewhere unseen to make a U shape that stretched as it dropped toward the Masters.

  I slid through the narrow passage between the beds and ran to the hallway and through the door, to where the froms were supposed to be. The buzzing of the wires got louder behind me.

  “Mom! Becky!” I glanced behind me and saw that the U-shaped wires were underneath the Pipe Men that I’d knocked down, slowly lifting them right end up.

  “Ryan?” It was my mom, calling from somewhere not far off, from behind one of the curtains.

  Three more Pipe Men came out from one of the curtain-enclosed rooms and whooshed toward me. I thought fast. The other Pipe Men had gone down with barely any effort on my part. They were so fragile, they needed their assistants to do everything for them. I could at least knock these three down for long enough to free Becky and get the antidote from her. I kicked.

  The Pipe Man in the middle fell on its back, letting out a high-pitched screech. The other two jumped at me, propelling themselves with sudden blasts of air. I punched one in the eye and then the other, and they fell. This was too easy. I turned to keep running and ran my stomach right into an assistant wire. It pushed me back toward the fallen Pipe Men, as if it were straining to reach them. I dropped to the ground and slid under it.

  The Pipe Men rolled around, trying to get into the cradles the wires made. Fortunately, the wires didn’t seem to care about me, but were only interested in righting the Pipe Men.

  I made it to the curtain and pulled it open. There was Dad, lying in the bed, looking the same as he’d looked two days ago, covered in wires and not moving. Mom sat on the floor, hands tangled in wires. Becky sat next to Mom, her hands also tangled in wires and her mouth wrapped in Pipe Man fabric.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “You still have the antidote?” I didn’t wait for her to try to answer, but reached into her pocket and pulled it out.

  “You had the antidote? Oh, baby.” Mom struggled, trying to stand, but her legs were also tangled in assistant wires.

  “I’ll explain everything,” I said. “Praise pupils, I hope this works.” Gript had never told me where to inject the antidote. He couldn’t know anything about human anatomy anyway. I was just going to have to guess. I took a deep breath and stuck the tiny syringe into Dad’s neck, pushing the needle all the way in. When it was empty, I pulled it out again. A few drops of blood dripped from the wound. I pressed the sleeve of my tunic against it. “Come on, Dad,” I whispered.

  Something thumped behind me. It was Becky, hopping on her butt.

  “Okay, I’m coming.” I let go of Dad, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Then I unwrapped the Pipe Man fabric from Becky’s head.

  “Behind you!” she yelled.

  I kicked a Pipe Man coming through the curtain.

  It fell backward into an assistant wire and, in seconds, was upright again.

  “You must stop,” it said.

  “What are you going to do?” I yelled. “You can’t do anything without your wires. You can’t stop me!”

  Suddenly, all the wires pulled away from Dad at once. I ducked, but some hit me, stinging like whips, knocking me on top of Becky. More wires also wrapped around Mom’s belly.

  “Ow!” Becky rolled out from under me, but wires slid over my head and wrapped around her.

  The Pipe Man was coming closer, leaning over me. Its top-hole dripped drool.

  “What are you going to do, spit on me?” I yelled.

  A glob of spit landed on my forehead. I
t burned a little.

  The Pipe Man scrunched up its top eyes, laughing.

  Some of the air whooshed out of the room. I leaned my head back and saw it—a portal, giant, swirling, and deep black with just a touch of red. It was right behind Dad’s bed.

  “You see that?” I said. “I can open a portal whenever I want to. I know more than you do.” At least, Front apparently could. I hoped it was him.

  With a whoosh of air, Dad’s bed began to roll. It was being sucked straight into the swirling portal.

  “Come on! We have to go after it.” I struggled to get the wires off me, but they pushed back and cut into my skin.

  “Ah!” Becky screeched as she was lifted off the ground by the wires. She hung there in midair, nine eyes up. Mom was next. She chirped more than screamed, staring wide-eyed at Dad’s disappearing bed.

  “It’s okay, Mom, he’s going to be fine, he—aah!” I couldn’t help but scream myself, being lifted suddenly into the air, even though I’d known it was coming. I squirmed against the wires. They cut into me more, but I didn’t care. “You see that?! I’ll open one right in front of you and you’ll never get back!”

  There were four Pipe Men now, all with wires behind them, ready to catch them if they fell again. One of them was carrying a calculator in its top-hole. It floated underneath me to the edge of the portal, where the remainder of Dad’s bed was disappearing into the breach. Lights were flashing all over its calculator, like I’d never seen on mine. Another Pipe Man floated next to the first, tapped the calculator with a stylus, and blinked eyes at the other.

  “You won’t be able to close it!”

  “Let me down, you overgrown drainpipes!” yelled Becky.

  “Don’t struggle, honey. You’re going to hurt yourself,” said Mom.

  Another portal opened right above the two Pipe Men. They both turned up their top three eyes, and the portal began slowly sucking them upward. The calculator clattered to the ground, followed by the stylus. As the stylus hit, a portal opened right below the calculator. It began sucking the Pipe Men back toward it. The other two Pipe Men sped forward. One tipped its top-hole over into the bottom portal, so that two, then three, then four of its eyes disappeared into it.

  The fourth Pipe Man maneuvered itself right under me and looked up. “Close it.”

  “Let us down first.”

  “Eeep!” The Pipe Man who had stuck its top into the lower portal screeched as it was suddenly sucked all the way in. The other two were hanging in the air, halfway into the upper portal and halfway out. Their bottoms flailed around, a mouth and four eyes each.

  “If you don’t close this portal, you will never return to Earth!” one shouted. I had never heard a Pipe Man yell before today, or really express any major emotion. Then again, I’d never seen one dangling unceremoniously from an interspace portal.

  “You can’t get out,” Becky taunted. “You . . . don’t . . . know . . . how . . . to . . . fix . . . it.”

  Why did she have to suddenly figure out how to make a complete sentence in their language? She was just going to make things worse.

  “But I can get out!” She wriggled through two of the wires holding her and jumped on top of the Pipe Man who was still standing. The Pipe Man bent its body and thrashed, but she jumped off it, stood up straight, and gave it a good kick. Her hands were still tied behind her back. She looked up at Mom and me. “Just wriggle side to side. They’re not made for holding froms.”

  I started wriggling around.

  “No, not like that, like this.” She twisted back and forth quickly from side to side, then turned and gave the Pipe Man on the ground another kick. It wriggled backward.

  I tried it the way she showed me, and after a few wriggles, I found myself starting to fall through the wires. Before I could think about how I was going to catch myself, I was on the ground, flat on my face.

  “Are you okay?” Becky leaned over me as I lifted myself up. My nose hurt, but I didn’t think it was broken.

  “I’m fine—Mom, are you trying it?” I unraveled the wires from Becky’s hands while Mom wriggled back and forth. “Try not to fall headfirst.” I reached out to catch her and she fell into me, almost knocking me over. I quickly unwrapped her hands and legs. “Let’s go!”

  “But where are we going? What’s in there?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s our friend opening the portals. Besides, we have to get Dad!”

  More wires were dropping, heading for the Pipe Man on the floor. We had to dodge them to make it to the portals.

  “I don’t think we want to go in that one,” I said, pointing to the one on the floor, where the Pipe Man had disappeared. “Dad went that way. So we have to jump. Mom?”

  With a little spring, Mom jumped over the portal on the ground and disappeared into the place the wall should be.

  “Becky?”

  She jumped.

  “You can let them go,” I said, hoping Front would hear me. “Just close the portal after me.”

  The portal on the ground sucked itself closed. The two Pipe Men who were hanging in the air fell abruptly onto the now-solid floor. They both let out squeaky metallic groans and wriggled to straighten their bodies. A third Pipe Man dropped heavily out of the portal onto its fellows and lay flat, eyes up. I recognized it as the one that had been sucked into the other portal. All nine of its dazed eyes blinked at me. After this, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be able to go home.

  “I’m infinitely sorry,” I said. “I really am,” and I jumped over the Pipe Men and into the wall.

  Thirty

  I STOPPED AFTER A STEP through the portal, still feeling the buzzing, tiny pinpricks poking at me from all sides. I was back in the Brocine zoo sector, on Pipe Man fabric ground, looking up at the dark O-thul-ban sky. I blinked and shook to get the pinpricks off me, but they lingered. It took me a few seconds to see straight.

  Dad’s bed was in front of me. He was still lying on it. Mom was on one side, and Becky was on the other. Ip was next to Becky, wrapping her in one large blobby arm. There were Xaxor standing at the head of the bed, four of them.

  I blinked again, not sure I was seeing right. But I was. And Dad was waking up, looking around, even more confused than I was. He looked at Becky and Ip, at Mom, and at me.

  “Where am I?” He took a deep breath and lifted himself up onto his elbows.

  “We’re in the zoo, honey,” said Mom, “in the Brocine sector.”

  “Why am I in bed? And why is it dark?”

  “There was an accident. One of the Brocine children stabbed you with its nose. You couldn’t wake up.” Mom tried to hold back tears, but sniffed.

  “I remember,” said Dad. “It wouldn’t eat. I prodded it with the dish. It squeaked and jumped on me. That’s it—then I was here. What happened?”

  “We got an antidote, Dad,” I broke in. “You’re going to be fine, but I don’t have time to explain everything. We have to get out of here before the Pipe Men get their act together and stop us from going.”

  “Going? Where are we going?” He sat up all the way and swung his legs over the side of the bed, toward Mom.

  “Take it easy, honey,” said Mom.

  “We don’t have time for him to take it easy,” I said. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so. Just give me a second. I’ll be fine.” He shook his head as if to clear it and then froze, seeing the Xaxor for the first time.

  “They’re Xaxor, Dad. They’re here to help us escape.”

  “Escape?” Dad didn’t take his eyes off the Xaxor. “What are we escaping from?”

  “From the zoo, from the Pipe Men! And we have to go. They’re going to be coming after us.”

  “Hold on a second, son. Where are we supposed to be escaping to? This is our home.”

  “Not anymore, Dad. We had to go to Brock to get the antidote and—just trust me!” I looked around, trying to take stock of where everyone was.

  “To Brock? You mean, the Broci
ne home planet?”

  Our Xaxor was behind me, its eyes turned away from us.

  “Mom, Becky, help Dad up. And you”—I pointed to the four Xaxor—“get ready to open a portal. We have to go anywhere, now!”

  “We don’t need them,” said Becky. “We have Front to help us.”

  “Front?” I called.

  “Ryan.” Front’s voice in my head was faint, as if coming from a great distance.

  We need to get out of here, I thought.

  “They’re inside me. All around me.”

  What? Front, what’s wrong?

  Front made a tiny sound, like a groan or a sigh, and then he was silent.

  “Inside him!” Becky said. “How?”

  I shook my head. We’d have to help him, but first we had to get out of the zoo. I pointed at the four Xaxor again. “Just get the calculator ready!” I ran to our Xaxor and saw what it was looking at. Gript was huddled with four other Brocine, two the size of Gript and two much smaller. “You got them! How are they?”

  Gript looked up at me, tears in his eyes. “Not well at all.” He squeaked something in their language. One of the adult Brocine was sitting, but the other three were lying on the ground, looking asleep, passed out, or worse. They stank as bad as a whole cave full.

  “Are they alive?” I bent down to get a closer look.

  Gript held out a paw. “Careful, Earth. The children can’t control themselves.”

  I pulled back a little, to what I hoped was out of jumping range, though from the look of it, none of them was in any shape to jump. “What’s wrong with them? Can we move them?”

  “We will have to—they need water—and other Brocine. No Brocine should go so long without its pack.” Gript bared his teeth, pushed out his nose, and flexed the claws on all four paws.

  “I can take two in my backpack.” I pointed to it. “And Becky can take two. Will they be okay? Becky, come over here!”

  We took what water we had and tried to make Gript’s family drink a little, but the little ones were barely able to sip. In the background, Mom was trying to explain to Dad what had gone on. She didn’t quite tell it right, but at least she understood that we had to get out of here. Dad was arguing, saying the Pipe Men had been good to us.