by Rob Favre
There was no sign of the lush paradise of condiments that Mustard had promised us. There were no ice cream clusters in orbit, no oceans of relish, no Moltencheese volcanos.
Mustard looked down at the scene below us. “Hmm. One second, dudes.” He went back into “extreme concentration” mode.
I was a little confused, but hopeful. “This isn’t much like he described it, but we might be okay. At least whoever lives here looks like they know how to get things into space.”
Renay nodded. “I hope so. It is all so… busy. What do you suppose all of it is for?”
Before I could answer, Mustard was back, his reddish brow furrowed in confusion. “I double checked the calculations. We’re at the right planet. I just… I don’t remember it this way.”
Renay took one of his tentacles in her hands and held it tenderly. “Maybe it is changed since last you saw it.”
He wore the look of a very confused sausage. “I dunno, dude. There should be… volcanos.” He just stared at the planet for a long time in silence. Then, without warning, he wriggled his tentacles in a spasm of uncertainty. “You know what dudes? It’s all good. We’re going to get down there, and it’s going to be even better than I remember. You’ll see.”
I patted him on the bun in what I hoped was a brotherly manner. “I never doubted it, Mustard. We can’t wait to see.”
The bright pink-and-blue marble below us grew as we approached.
I suddenly wished that I had some way to take a shower or change into clean clothes. I wished that I had something to wear that wasn’t a relish onesie. And I wished, more than anything else, for a way to get back to New Newton and save everyone.
The volunteers barred the passage up to the hatch, steel bars locked tight in their clenched fists.
“Who are you to bar our way?” Haris’s indignant voice echoed across the main hall. “We are but peaceful pilgrims, seeking to follow in the path of Captain Jimmy.”
Boris shook his head. “The council heard your request, and they said no. Nobody leaves.”
Of course Haris had waited for mealtime to pull this stunt. He wanted to look like a martyr in front of his followers, all eight of them. Eight seemed like a small number, but even eight people foolish enough to believe his nonsense was a sign that things were getting more desperate. She hurried the boys along with their meal, hoping to leave before any confrontation began.
Haris’s voice boomed through the chamber again. “This persecution of our faith is wholly unjustified. If you wish to stay here in your hole, deluded about what is really happening up above, you are free to make that choice. For my part, I plan to push through the small storm that rages above our colony, and out into the light where Captain Jimmy has prepared a feast for us. It is only a matter of having the faith to see the truth, and the will to endure the storm.”
Boris stood his ground, but Yvette and Penelope approached him. They talked quietly for a few moments. Boris announced that the council had changed their mind, and that the pilgrims were free to go, if that was their choice.
Haris led his eight followers down the passage, the hymn they sang echoing off stone, until their voices sound like many more than eight. When they opened the hatch, the wind outside wailed through Safe Home F like a dying animal.
The hatch closed with a final metal clang.
No one ever heard from Captain Jimmy’s Disciples again. But now, there were nine fewer mouths to feed.
Chapter 19
We blinked at the bright daylight and stepped down the sunlight stairs onto a field of pink fur. Renay laughed when she knelt and touched it with her finger. “It’s so soft!” I tried it too, and she was right – it was like we’d landed on a gigantic pink chinchilla.
A blue star burned high in the pristine sky, too brilliant to look at, but it gave everything a strange hue. Renay’s hair looked almost black, her skin the palest of blues. She smiled at me, just for a sliver of a second, and turned to look at some structures about a kilometer away. It was hard to tell how big they were, but they were delicate and graceful, curves of polished metal and glinting crystal. A gentle breeze stirred the pink tufts under our feet. It had the faintest scent of vanilla.
Renay closed her eyes and faced the warm star overhead. “This place is… paradise.”
“Hey, Earth wasn’t so bad.”
“Nothing here is trying to eat us.”
“Yet.”
“Mustard, thank you for bringing us here. I feel… safe. And hopeful. It is wonderful.”
Mustard frowned. “I guess… if you’re into, like, beauty and serenity and crap like that. I’m just here for the Moltencheese. And I think I remember where we can find it.”
Renay laughed. “On our way to find the Moltencheese, do you think we will meet anyone who can help us with our problem?”
“Right now, our only real problem is finding Moltencheese.”
“Mustard.”
“Okay, okay, dude. Fine. Yeah, we’ll find someone. Lots of smart people here.”
Mustard seemed distracted, and not in the way he was usually distracted. He wasn’t trying to change the subject, or sing a song, or suggest that someone put ranch dressing on something that really should not be eaten with ranch dressing. He was just… far away.
He led us over softly rolling soft fields, toward the gleaming structure. As we got closer, I could see people walking around. I inhaled deeply, let it out slowly. It had been months and months getting here. We had struggled and sacrificed to get here. But if we could find help, it would all have been worth it.
“Hey,” I said to Renay as we walked, hanging back a little from Mustard. “I think this just might work.”
She tried to hide her smile, but it shone through anyway, like the sunlight bursting through clouds. “I think so as well.”
“Sorry I made us to go Earth and almost get eaten. Guess we could have saved a lot of time if we’d just listened to Mustard and just come here to begin with.”
We had just landed on an alien planet covered in pink fur, but by far the most surprising thing that happened that day was what happened next: Renay gave me a big hug. I could not believe how good it felt to be that close to someone. “Do not be sorry,” she said after she let me go. “Had we not visited Earth, I would never have learned what Chicken My Nuggets taste like.”
I laughed. We walked side by side, and the soft fur of the planet tickled my toes through the holes in my shoes.
“This feels like something from a movie,” I said, maybe to myself. The floor was smooth, polished stone the color of rubies. Maybe it was rubies. Overhead was a complicated structure of crystal canopies, like a sculpture depicting sheets blowing in the wind, frozen at a moment in time. There were no walls, so the perfumed breeze swirled gently around us. Somewhere in the structure overhead, chimes tinkled musically, composing playful melodies with each breath of wind.
“What movie is it like?” Renay kept her voice low. Something about this place felt like a library.
“Well, I dunno… Not any particular movie. It’s just… something I’d only expect to see in a movie. It doesn’t feel like a real place.”
A silver cylinder topped with a glowing golden tabletop floated past us on the left. It was carrying elaborate crystal glasses, each full a different bright colored liquid. It was headed down the path to where a little group of a half dozen people were gathered. They didn’t seem to be talking or doing anything; they were just looking out to the horizon. It was quite a nice view.
I nodded toward them. “I guess we start there. Mustard, will you be able to translate?”
Mustard looked pinched. “I don’t know, dude. I don’t think these are the people you want to ask. I know a place where they’ll really know how to help. Maybe we should go there.”
“Well, we’re already here. Can’t hurt to try.”
Mustard’s silence made me wonder if maybe it would hurt somehow. But we’d come too far now to leave without even asking. I looked at Renay.
“Here goes nothing.”
She nodded. We walked toward them.
As we got closer, I could make out more details on the people we were going to talk to. Two were obviously women, one obviously a man; the other three, I couldn’t really tell. Some had vibrantly colored hair, some were hairless. One had skin flecked with glittering gold; one had skin with tiger stripes. Each wore an elaborate outfit, completely distinct from the others, that was some messy collision of a prom dress, a kimono, and a marching band uniform.
They kept gazing into the distance as we got closer. I guess they hadn’t noticed us.
“Um, excuse me,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Do you know who around here we should talk to about borrowing a spaceship?”
They all turned around. Five sets of human eyes, and one set of yellow cat eyes, all of them wet with tears, stared at me unblinking.
But nobody said anything.
The long sleeves of their garments rustled, ever so gently, with a shift in the breeze.
“Um, Mustard? A little help?”
Mustard chuckled. “Sorry, dude. Not too much I can do to help at this point. It’s kind of funny, actually.”
“What’s funny? They sure aren’t laughing.”
“Oh, no, it’s not funny to them. They’re furious. But it’s funny to me.”
“Mustard!”
“Come on, these guys aren’t going to be any help. And not just because you’ve been incredibly rude to them. But I know who we should ask.”
“Fine, take us to them. And I’m going to need an explanation about what I did that was so rude.”
Mustard told us we had to wait for a ride, but I was not about to stand there being judged by the silent stares of these weirdos, so we walked away. After we left I looked back and they were all still there, staring at the spot where I’d been five minutes ago. I didn’t know what was going on with these people, but they gave me the creeps.
Renay and I sat on the ruby path with our feet in the planet’s pink fur. Behind us was a fountain where sapphire-blue liquid burbled peacefully, trickling across delicate crystal leaves on its way up to the ceiling. Yeah, it was a fountain that flowed up. This place was getting weirder every minute.
“Okay, Mustard, what happened back there?”
“Alright, here’s the thing, dude. Most people don’t actually talk all that much anymore. They mostly send each other messages.”
“Like texting?”
“Kind of. Except instead of typing on a screen and reading on a screen, they send them directly from one brain to another.”
“So, it was rude of me to talk to them?”
“A little. But what really made them mad was that you interrupted the brainy they were braining at the most important moment, and then ignored them. Like, they probably thought you were human, and assumed you were just blocking their messages. Which is, like, a super bogus thing to do.”
“Well, whatever. They didn’t seem like the kind of people I want to talk to anyway.”
“I completely agree with you, dude.” A sleek silver platform glided silently to a stop next to us. “Let’s go talk to somebody who can help.”
The pink fur and cookie-scented breeze seemed a long way away.
We stepped off the platform onto a flat gray surface, hard as rock but perfectly smooth and level. Whether someone had shaped rock that was already here, or created it somehow, I had no idea. All around us, extending as far as we could see in any direction, were huge, blocky white buildings, kilometers across and at least ten stories tall, unmarked and windowless. Hovering platforms glided here and there, carrying boxes and canisters and stacks of parts that I couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. A steady stream of large canisters rose up into the bright blue sky, each one surrounded in a cube of shimmering golden light. The stream rose until the canisters became too small to see, but the stream was aimed toward a tiny white dot high up in the sky. Probably one of those huge starships we’d seen in orbit as we approached the planet. The dot looked small, but if I could see it in orbit from down here on the ground, it had to be massive.
It had taken quite a while to get here. The platform that had carried us moved fast, but it was hard to say exactly how far we’d gone. Maybe a hundred kilometers, maybe a little more. For the first hour or so, the scenery had been lovely. Mustard was his normal bubbly self. He filled our travel time with stories of all the wonderful things we were about to see, and taste. Turns out, he’d checked his memories more carefully and realized we were just on the wrong part of the planet to see all the volcanoes of cheese and mountains of nachos and avalanches of meatballs. But he knew where to go to find them, and he was taking us there. I wondered how all this junk food was going to help us rescue anyone, but I didn’t say anything. If Renay was wondering the same thing I was, she kept it to herself.
But the further we got from the crystal paradise full of snobs in weird clothes, the sparser the pink fur was, until it gave way to bare rock. The air lost is perfume and took on the tangy smell of metal and oil. Mustard kept talking about pineapple mango coconut-crusted buffalo meatballs, but he sounded nervous. And then we’d entered this huge complex, whatever it was, and weaved through the valleys between blocky white buildings until we finally came to a stop here.
“This looks less pretty, but more… productive,” Renay said as she looked around, trying to take it all in. “It seems you have brought us to the right place to find help, Mustard.” She took one of his tentacles and gave it a squeeze.
“No, no, this is… Everything is wrong.” There was a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard before. It sounded like panic. “This is where… There are supposed to be… Let me ask around.”
He twirled his tentacles in a circular pattern to show that he was working. No doubt he was contacting whatever network ran this place. What he was asking, or what kind of answers he was getting, were a mystery to me.
“What do you suppose this all is for?” Renay asked. It was a lot noisier here with all the cargo clanking around, so she no longer felt any need to whisper.
“I have no idea. Looks like a factory or a port or… something.”
“There are no Moltencheese volcanos, are there?”
I could not say, but she and I certainly seemed to be the only edible things here. Everything else was hard surfaces, right angles, the scrape and clank of metal against metal.
“Do you think we will be able to get help here?”
“I don’t know, but Mustard sure seems spooked. Something about this place is weird.”
“I hope we do not stay long. Earth had more things trying to eat us, but at least it felt alive.”
Mustard was back. He did not say anything for a while, but his eyes were sad and distant, and his tentacles slumped listlessly.
“Hey, buddy,” I gave him a playful pat on the bun. “What did you find out? Can we get some help here?”
“Tom, Renay, my friends, I am sorry.” Mustard looked down at the ground, unable to even look me in the eye. “It seems I was wrong about this place. And now, I must say goodbye.”
“Mustard, wait. What do you mean?”
Another platform glided to a stop beside him. He climbed aboard without a word, and it whisked him away.
The good news was, the huge rectangular buildings were laid out in straight lines and right angles, so we could see the building that Mustard went into.
The bad news was, that building was really, really far away.
Renay and I didn’t discuss it, didn’t exchange a word. We just started running. Something was wrong with Mustard, and we had to help. I told myself it was because we needed him to fly the ship, to translate for us, to basically do anything. But I don’t think that was it. At least, that wasn’t all of it.
We had been so close. Ten minutes ago, I had really thought we were about to finally get the help we’d come all this way to find. Now, I wasn’t even sure we had a way to get off this planet. Fear and anger drove me along, faster and fast
er. My lungs burned, my hair was damp with sweat.
I slowed down.
I stopped to catch my breath.
We had gone about half a kilometer.
It turns out, being locked up in a small cabin for more than a year isn’t great for your conditioning.
Renay stopped too. She was breathing almost as hard as I was. She didn’t say anything, and neither did I, but we continued at a more modest pace. It took little less than an hour to get to the door we’d seen Mustard go into.
Inside the building it was hot, and loud, and busy. Huge machines rumbled, parts and containers and boxes whizzed through the air on floating platforms, always about to collide but never quite colliding. A phalanx of tentacled hot dogs, immobile and identical, stood in formation, filling an open space just in front of us. They didn’t look like Mustard, not exactly – more like someone had made fan art of Mustard and then built that. The eyes were too big and cute, the bun thinner and less real-looking.
“Those things are very creepy.” Renay had to shout to be heard over all the noise. “Our Mustard is better in every way.”
I nodded. “We just have to figure out where he is.”
Before I could try to figure out how to start looking for him, something came and found us.
A figure of pale pink crystal, approximately feminine in curve and motion, approached us with delicate and precise footsteps. In a gentle, soothing voice, it said something I did not recognize at all.
I thought back to our first encounter with Mustard and thought of something that might be worth a shot. “Can you use English? Um, early twenty-first century American English?”
“Certainly. Is this satisfactory?” Her voice was almost a purr.
“That’s great, thanks.”