by Mark Crilley
“Hey, a little less attitude and a little more gratitude. I’m taking a big risk here for your benefit.”
“Okay, okay. What’s this all about?”
She turned away from me, poked her head out of the hole, and took a good look in all directions. “It’s about …” She turned back to face me, concern in her piercing little eyes. “It’s about me trying to clue you in. Because, let’s face it, you don’t have a clue what’s going on, do you?”
“Clue about what?”
“Clue about Chibb Fallaby,” she said. “About why he’s making things hard for you.” She followed this with a nod and a knowing arch of the eyebrows.
“Well, go on. I’m listening.”
“Chibb Fallaby hates Earthians. Hates your whole home planet.”
“No way. Really?”
“With a passion.”
“But … why?”
She paused and ran a hand through her spiky green hair. “I’ll keep this as short as possible. Chibb’s got an older brother. Nool Fallaby. You know that name?”
“No.”
She rolled her eyes, as if I were even more clueless than she’d first imagined.
“Okay, well, Nool Fallaby used to be an inter-galactic explorer, one of the best Zarga Baffa ever had. He once visited Earth, back when Chibb was still just a kid. It was a matter of great family pride. Nool was the first Zarga Baffian to visit all the populated planets of the Milky Way.”
“So what happened when he got to Earth? He didn’t like it there?”
“Oh, he loved it there. Stayed on Earth longer than any of the other planets. It was after he came back to Zarga Baffa that the troubles began. See, he picked something up on Earth.”
“Picked something up?”
“An illness. I think you Earthians call it the flow: fever, chills, muscular pain.”
“The flow?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. It’s very common on your planet.”
I thought for a moment. Then it hit me.
“The flu,” I said. “You’re talking about the flu, not the flow.”
“Flu, flow, whatever. The thing is, once Chibb’s brother got this thing, he was never able to shake it. The finest medical minds in all of Zarga Baffa tried to help him, but nothing could be done. It pretty much ended his career as an explorer. Really wrecked the guy. And, more importantly—from your point of view—it affected Chibb in a big way.”
“Why, did Chibb catch the flu from his brother?”
“No, no, no.” Raspa shook her head crisply. “The doctors made sure of that. Kept Nool quarantined. Confined him to a wing of the Zarga Baffa hospital for years. Think about it: here was this guy that Chibb looked up to—a real hero to him—reduced to coughing and wheezing for the rest of his life. And all because of your home planet.”
I thought about what she was saying. Chibb had made a point of saying that I was the first Earthian ever to attend the Zarga Baffa training camp, so he was certainly aware of my origins.
“So you think Chibb blames me for his brother getting sick.”
“I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that when Chibb sees you, he thinks about Earth. And when he thinks about Earth, he gets angry.”
“So you think he stuck me with that crazy nognag on purpose?”
“Who knows? It’s a pretty weird coincidence, though.” She rose to leave. “Really weird, if you ask me.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t leave yet. You’ve got to tell me what to do.”
She was already halfway out of the hole, but she stopped long enough to say one more thing: “I can’t live your life for you, Akiko. You make your own decisions. But if I were you, I’d cry blue and hop the next astroshuttle out of here. Because this I know for sure: Chibb Fallaby will grow wings and hoot like a yoodoo bird before he allows an Earthian to graduate from this training camp. That’s all there is to it. And believe you me,” she added, her eyes tensing into a fierce squint, “if you think Chibb has been tough on you so far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
With that she leaped into the air and disappeared from view. I poked my head out to follow her descent, but she moved so quickly, all I caught was a flash of red as she vanished into her hole. All at once everything was as it had been before: alien crickets chirping, gray moonlit haze drifting through the trees.
Raspa’s words echoed in my head: “All I’m saying is that when Chibb sees you, he thinks about Earth. And when he thinks about Earth, he gets angry.”
Is she right about all that? Is Chibb really out to get me?
There was certainly no shortage of evidence to back her up. The meteor that came within a hair of landing on me. The angry edge to Chibb’s voice every time he talked to me. And the nognag he stuck me with, the one that turned me into the laughingstock of Zarga Baffa. The more I thought about it, the more frightened I became of what lay ahead.
Okay, suppose Chibb really does have something against me graduating, I thought. If he does, he’s going to give me two more U’s. Then our whole team will be sent home.
But if I cry blue like Raspa says, I’m the only one who will get sent home. Spuckler, Gax, Mr. Beeba, and Poog will at least have a chance.
What a decision! Crying blue was the last thing I wanted to do. But if Chibb really did have an anti-Earthian bias, having me around was going to ruin things for the others.
I tossed and turned, trying to figure out what was the best thing to do.
I don’t want to be a quitter, I thought before closing my eyes for a few more hours of fitful sleep, but this time I may have no choice.
Chapter 14
The second day of lessons was no better than the first. After giving us another bitter black lump for breakfast, Chibb led us to a dark and drafty gymnasium for a series of robo-alien wrestling exercises.
“Oh yeah, this is gonna be a hoot,” said Spuckler, giddy with anticipation as we found our seats beside a large octagonal ring. “Can’t wait to treat one of these fellers to my backhand half nelson.” The mat was scuff-marked, dusty, and covered with stains (many of which, I had no doubt, were the blood and body fluids of earlier trainees).
“We’ll start with the bipeds and quadrupeds,” said Chibb, “then work our way up to the decapeds and gazoolapeds.” He began passing around leather kneepads and sweat-stained headgear. “Make sure you keep these guards clamped tightly across your foreheads. Some of these guys know a move that’ll make your eyes pop out of their sockets.”
I was watching Chibb in a whole new way now, analyzing him for evidence of an anti-Earthian bias. If he had one, he was good at hiding it. He treated me pretty much like the others. But I couldn’t help wondering if Raspa was right. Was Chibb somehow stacking the deck against me?
I’ll wait and see if he gives me another U, I thought. If he doesn’t, then there’s no need to cry blue. But if he does …
The robo-alien wrestling was exhausting, painful, and—at times—highly embarrassing. I held my own against my first opponent, Uklay, a slow-moving beast with seven-clawed hands and a long, crooked tail. The second one, though—a potbellied, spiky-backed creature named Lulk—wore me out within minutes. I tried all the evasive moves Chibb taught us at the outset of the lesson: leaping and cartwheeling over the beast’s shoulders, ducking and somersaulting between his legs. But it was no use. I ended up pinned to the mat with my head between my legs, my arms locked behind my back, and my butt sticking straight up in the air.
“Come on, child, fight!” cried Chibb as the staticky voice of the robo-alien counted down from twenty to zero. “Show me what you’re made of !”
Whatever I was made of, it clearly wasn’t good robo-wrestling material. Lulk beat me handily. My third and final match (against a long-legged freaky thing that hissed and banged like a broken washing machine) was over in a matter of seconds.
Chibb shut the robo-alien off and pulled me out from underneath it. He was disappointed. Worse than that: he was angry.
“There’s a problem with your motivation today, Akiko. You seem confused, indecisive. Anything you need to talk about with me?”
Maybe I should ask him about what Raspa said. Find out if it’s true.
“Are you …,” I began, then stopped myself. I wasn’t sure how to put the question.
“Am I what?”
Even if it’s true, he’s not going to admit it. It’s not going to do me any good to put him on the spot like this.
“Are you … going to give me an A or a P?”
Chibb shook his head. “Oh, is that it? The grades. Is that all you care about, Akiko? Getting an A or a P?”
“No,” I said, “but—”
“This is not about grades, Akiko,” Chibb said, his face hardening. “This is about doing your very best. Giving your all. And you, child, are not giving your all. You’re not even giving your half.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “I really am.”
“Well, here’s something to make you try harder, Akiko,” Chibb said. “Another U.”
My heart began pounding. Blood rushed to my face.
Raspa’s right. He’s giving me U’s on purpose. He’s against me. He is!
“You hate me,” I said, startled by the sound of the words coming from my own mouth.“You hate me because I’m an Earthian!”
Mr. Beeba and Poog stared at me in disbelief. Gax cocked his head to one side, maybe thinking he’d misheard me. Even Spuckler—who was in the middle of a furious series of stretching exercises in preparation for his first match—looked surprised.
But no one looked more stunned than Chibb. Was he shocked because I’d discovered his secret? Or was he simply unaware of the fact that he’d been treating me unfairly? It was impossible to tell.
“Enough,” he said after a very long silence. “Go to the bench and cool off, Akiko. We’ll resume this discussion when you are in a more reasonable state of mind.”
At lunch it didn’t take long for everyone to start asking about my outburst. I told them all about Raspa and the secret information she’d shared with me in the middle of the night. I pointed out all the evidence. Then I told them how crying blue was the only way I could save everyone’s chances of graduating.
“I don’t know, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler between mouthfuls of gray-green sludge. “I mean, you’ve had a pretty rough time of it, sure. But Chibb bein’ out to getcha just ’cause you’re an Earthian? Sounds a little far-fetched.”
“Normally I try not to do this,” said Mr. Beeba, “but I’m going to have to agree with Spuckler. I’ll attest to the fact that Chibb has been pushing you, and pushing you hard, but the idea that he is deliberately trying to stop you from graduating strikes me as improbable at best.”
“What about the nognag?” I said. “How do you explain that?”
“IT WAS A MOST UNFORTUNATE TURN OF EVENTS, MA’AM,” said Gax, “BUT WELL WITHIN THE REALM OF STATISTICAL COINCIDENCE. INDEED, AS I RECALL, MASTER FALLABY NEARLY ASSIGNED THAT NOGNAG TO ME, BUT CHANGED HIS MIND WHEN HE SAW THAT ITS BACK WAS NOT BROAD ENOUGH TO SUPPORT MY AXLES.”
I turned to Poog, gesturing at him with outstretched palms. “What do you think, Poog? You’ve been watching Chibb. All this stuff is more than just coincidence. It’s got to be.”
Poog paused before answering. I could see my own pleading expression reflected in his big, glassy eyes.
Poog frowned, then quietly uttered a few warbly syllables in Toogolian. Mr. Beeba nodded as he prepared to translate. “Poog says there is merit to both sides of the argument. He says you are right about Chibb in certain respects and wrong about him in others.”
“Okay, then I’m at least half right.” I held my breath and tried to swallow a bite of food so quickly that I wouldn’t actually taste it. “Anyway, the point is I need to cry blue. I don’t want to, but I have to. Otherwise, Chibb’s going to give me another U, and then none of us will graduate.”
“It is far from a foregone conclusion,” said Mr. Beeba, “that Chibb is going to give you another U, Akiko. He’s trying to motivate you, that’s all. He’s put you into this position because he knows that you will do your best when the stakes are highest.”
“Ya can’t cry blue, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler. “It ain’t in your blood. You’re a fighter, not a quitter.”
“I know that, but what else can I do? I’m dealing with a guy who’s out to get me!”
Just then, from directly behind my head: “Out to get you? Who’s out to get you?”
I turned my head to find Chibb Fallaby standing right next to me. I swallowed so hard I thought I would choke.
“Well? Come on,” he said. “Tell me. As your training master, I’d really like to know.”
“I … I’m not sure.”
Chibb smiled, but his eyebrows were drawn together knowingly. He leaned over and put a hand on my shoulder, sending a chill straight down my spine. “Well, if you find out, be sure to let me know. I don’t want anyone tormenting my students. Especially Zarga Baffa’s very first Earthian.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“All right,” said Chibb, straightening up and clapping his hands together. “Lunchtime’s over. Off to our afternoon lessons.”
Chapter 15
The afternoon lessons—the last I’d have to suffer through, I told myself—looked to be relatively simple. Chibb led us to a darkened room where a replica of a rocket ship was suspended in midair by a network of pulleys and cables. It was a pretty small rocket ship, about the size of a bus, and different from a real rocket ship in that there were no markings of exhaust smoke on the rear boosters. The midsection of the ship was covered with a wide band of reinforced steel. There were indentations all over it, as if something had slammed into it many thousands of times.
Chibb opened the cockpit door and spent a good half hour showing us how to fly it. Luckily for me it wasn’t all that different from Boach’s Bullet, the ship I’d flown in the Alpha Centauri 5000, so I already had a pretty good idea of what I’d need to do once I got behind the controls.
“The purpose of this exercise is to test your powers of concentration,” said Chibb as he handed around metallic gray boxes, one for each of us. “Any fool can pilot a rocket ship. But only a Zarga Baffa graduate can pilot a rocket ship and make a muzzlegup sandwich at the same time.”
A sandwich? What is this, some kind of joke?
I opened my box. It contained two slices of olive green bread, a hunk of yellow meat, an assortment of brightly colored vegetables, several jars of condiments, and a stubby little knife.
“Instructions on how to make a proper muzzlegup sandwich are printed on the inside of the lid,” said Chibb. “Study them carefully. I’ll be inspecting your sandwiches at the conclusion of the exercise. Points will be deducted for meat sliced too thickly—an eighth inch means an eighth inch—and condiments oozing off the edges of the bread will bring you down a full grade. Don’t even think about applying the veggies in the wrong order.”
By the tone of Chibb’s voice, you’d have thought he was talking about triple bypass surgery. Making a sandwich while flying a rocket ship—silly as it sounded to me—was clearly a matter of grave importance to him. “Any questions?”
Spuckler raised his hand. “Do we get t’ eat the sammiches when we’re done?”
Chibb grinned. “I’ll tell you what, Spuckler. If everyone gets at least a D, you will be rewarded with the sandwiches. Otherwise they go to the training master, as is the custom.”
I had just one question, but I wasn’t about to ask it: Should I cry blue as soon as the exercise begins, or wait until I’ve goofed around with this stupid sandwich first?
Better wait until about halfway through, I told myself. Don’t want to make it too obvious I planned to quit from the start.
“It’s been a while since you went first, Akiko,” said Chibb. “Why don’t you get in there and show us how it’s done?”
I studied his face. Did he know about my plan to cry blue?
Impossible. How could he?
“Okay,” I said. Tucking the metallic lunchbox under my arm, I climbed the small stairway that led to the door of the rocket ship.
I shut the door and strapped myself in. The cockpit was small and dark, and stank from the sweat of hundreds of alien trainees. (I thought human perspiration smelled bad, but believe me, it’s like honeysuckle compared to some of the nose-bendingly stinky sweat out there in the universe.)
“Don’t open the box until you see the green light on the dashboard!” said Chibb from his position behind a bank of levers about a hundred feet from the nose of the rocket ship. “All right. Here we go.”
BVVVVVvvvvvvvv
The rocket hummed and rose into the air. I could hear the movements of the cables and pulleys, but the illusion of flight was still pretty convincing. Chibb yanked a lever and the rocket began to bank to the right.
VVVVVRRRrrrrrrrrrrr
My seat vibrated so strongly that I could barely see straight. The challenge of making a sandwich under these conditions was becoming crystal clear.
TING
A large bulb on the dashboard glowed bright green as the rocket began to roll back to a more even keel.
I shouldn’t even bother, I thought as I opened the metallic box in my lap, but what the heck? I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, but part of me was curious about the challenge of making a sandwich while flying a rocket ship. That’s the problem with deciding you’re going to quit: things go and get interesting on you at the last minute.
I pulled out the first slice of bread. Laying it on the inside of the lid, I tried to get a second look at the how-to guide but found it impossible to read as the words shook, jumped, circled, and did everything but stand still. Fortunately I’d pretty much memorized the guidelines before boarding the ship.
SSSHHHOOOoooooooooo
The rocket tipped all the way up to a near vertical position, and the contents of the box nearly flew up into my face: I slapped a hand on top of them just in time. Then, using my elbow, I pushed down a lever that brought the ship level again.