The Sky Inside

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Dad was directing the freight bots in cleaning up the loading bay, and Martin had to admit that it was looking nicer than he’d ever seen it. But it hardly seemed like round-the-clock, week-long work. The freight bots could probably do it on their own. Why was Dad here? he wondered. No packets came on Rest Day. Rest Day . . . The phrase jarred something in his memory.

  “Dad, no packets are coming today, right?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” said his father curtly, and then he walked off.

  It’s that inspection thing again, thought Martin. That’s right. Dad said the transmitter was arriving today.

  His father’s console began to beep steadily, jerking him out of his thoughts. Dad hurried over to see what had triggered the warning, and Martin jumped up to read the screen over his father’s shoulder.

  BNBRX ONLINE, read the screen. UNSCHEDULED PACKET APPROACHING YOUR BAY WILL ARRIVE IN ONE HOUR FORTY SEVEN MINUTES

  Unscheduled? That must be the transmitter, Martin thought. But Dad was looking puzzled.

  HM1 ONLINE, he typed back. WHAT IS PACKETS ORIGIN

  BNBRX ONLINE, came the answer. ORIGIN UNKNOWN POINTS VISUAL INDICATES SELF GUIDED TRANSPORT CONFIRMS A HUMAN AT THE CONTROLS

  “A human?” Martin asked.

  “A human!” Dad exclaimed. “Martin, you’d better go.”

  The screen blinked for a few seconds and then lit up.

  PACKET CHIEF GATHER YOUR SUBURB, it read. MANDATORY ALL FAMILIES ATTEND

  HM1 ONLINE, Dad typed. FRED IS THAT YOU

  But his message died away before he could finish. The console screen went black.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The news spread as fast as eager children could run from house to house. A stranger was coming to their suburb! By the time the mysterious packet rolled through the steel gates, every single resident was waiting to greet it in the crowded funeral room. They had to shout to hear one another over the din.

  “Maybe it’s one of those giveaways,” suggested David to Matt and Martin. “Maybe it’s a taste test, and we’ll get to pick a new flavor. Let’s pick the one that’s really bad and see if it gets its own commercial.”

  Alarm bells beeped in the loading bay. A long packet rolled through the doors of the octagonal chamber and stopped in their midst. Never in Martin’s years of watching his father at work had he seen a packet like this. It was bright, shiny red with big glass windows down the sides, a jolly sight in that dismal room.

  The door at the front slid open, and a young man stepped out, the first stranger most of them had ever met. He was every bit as remarkable as his transport, good-looking and tall, with thick chestnut hair and brown eyes. He had an indefinable appeal—star quality, like a television actor—and he smiled easily, as if he were used to the public eye. He was wearing golf pants of bright red and yellow plaid, and his sweater, red with yellow diamonds, continued the flamboyant color scheme. It was too much to say that the two articles of clothing matched, but at least they seemed to get along.

  His outrageous outfit might have annoyed the adults present, but it acted on the Wonder Babies like a magnet. It suggested happy things to the little children: toys and the circus, a pledge of thrilling events to come. They wormed their way through the crowd until they stood in a fascinated throng at his feet.

  The adults and older children drew back to let the little ones through. They didn’t want to be too close to the packet in case the gaudy visitor did something embarrassing, like ask them to sing or pick volunteers for a contest. But Martin moved forward to keep an eye on Cassie. He didn’t want her getting too close to a stranger.

  “Welcome to suburb HM1,” Dad said in a hearty voice. Only Martin could detect the worry underneath it. But the unusual young man wasn’t listening. He seemed every bit as interested in the Wonder Babies as they were in him. He had picked up little Laura and was holding her in his arms, having what seemed to be a private conversation.

  “You’re the youngest of all, aren’t you?” he said gently. “You’re the baby of the whole suburb.”

  Laura looked like a picture in her frilly green party dress, and she beamed at the stranger in delight. “Mommy says the stork got tired after bringing me. That old stork’s taking a break.”

  “The stork has definitely had its ups and downs these last two years,” the man agreed. He set her on her feet and turned to Martin’s father. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t hear you.”

  “Welcome to HM1,” Dad repeated, less heartily this time. “My name is Walter Glass, and I’m the packet chief here.”

  But the young man still didn’t seem to be listening. Now he was gazing at the ceiling. Martin looked up to see what had caught his attention. A constellation of tiny sequins clung to the panels there, catching the room’s golden light and scattering it from dot to dot.

  “The transmitter?” the stranger asked softly, gesturing toward the tiny dots.

  A spasm of worry crossed Dad’s face. “I expect it today.”

  “And have you received the product recall announcement?” the young man asked. Dad’s face sagged like butter under running water. “You have. Excellent! Packet Chief, I expect your full support.”

  “What’s your name?” Laura asked, reaching up to him.

  “You can call me Motley,” he told her.

  “I know why,” Cassie said shyly. “It’s because you’re wearing motley.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “And because I’m motley myself, assembled from lots of different parts. Now, you,” he continued, bending down to study her, “you’re a Model Eleven-A, that’s what you are, with a recessive tweak on the fifteenth and nineteenth chromosomes.”

  Cassie grinned. “Mom wanted blue eyes to remind her of Granny.”

  This was a bit too cozy for Martin’s taste. “Come away, Cass,” he ordered, seizing her thin shoulder and pulling her back.

  Motley glanced up at the interruption. “You’re . . . too old,” he mused. And then he looked elsewhere, as if Martin couldn’t hold his interest.

  Meanwhile, Dad had recovered his composure. “Mr. Motley,” he said, “how . . . er . . . what would you like me to do to help?”

  “What can you do to help me?” Motley echoed. He stepped onto the packet car’s platform to elevate himself above the assembly.

  “I am not here,” he shouted, “so that you good people can do something to help me. Instead, I am here to do something for you. I have come to solve your most difficult problem—the problem of your children.”

  Neighbor turned to neighbor, perplexity on every face. What problem did their children have? Or were their children the problem?

  “Aren’t we kids supposed to be a problem?” muttered David to Matt.

  “Yeah!” Matt whispered back.

  “Your youngest children,” Motley went on, “are suffering, and so are you. They cannot become what you ask of them, and you cannot give them what they want. So I have been sent here to help you.”

  An excited ripple of talk ran through the crowd. Martin didn’t join in. Of course the Exponents were suffering; no one had to tell him that. But he didn’t think he liked this flashy television star for deciding to interfere.

  While Motley waited for the noise to die down, Jimmy stepped to the foot of the platform. He looked doubtful too, and his pale face was even more serious than usual. He took a deep breath and automatically reached a hand to his shoulder, but Patches wasn’t there. Martin felt a pang of sympathy for him and glanced around to find his dog. Chip laid his ears back, happy to be noticed, and Martin stroked his rough fur.

  “Are you really here to help us?” Jimmy asked. “Us children? To solve our problems?”

  Motley crouched down on the platform to study him. “You’re about eight years old,” he remarked. “And carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jimmy Ellis.”

  Motley nodded. “You’re the oldest of them. Yes, Jimmy, I am here most particularly to solve your pro
blems. That’s why I’m addressing your families.” And he straightened up to continue his speech.

  “Well, my problem is that I can’t find my pet rat,” said Jimmy. “Last week, he got lost—hurt maybe.” He gulped, and Martin saw him fight back tears. “He hasn’t come home, so I think he went back to his old home in the warehouse area. I know there has to be a way to find him, some sort of invention I could make. But I don’t know what it is. Do you know anything about rats?”

  “As it happens, I know a lot about rats,” Motley said. “About rats—and about you children. But I don’t have much time. I actually came here to solve a different problem.”

  Jimmy’s face crumpled. “I understand,” he said, and Martin saw the weight of the world settle back onto the boy’s shoulders.

  Motley saw it too.

  “You know rats don’t live very long,” he pointed out kindly.

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmy replied in a dull voice. “An average life span of two years.”

  “Besides,” Motley said, “your parents have probably tried the same sorts of traps I would try.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. Of course he won’t, thought Martin; he doesn’t want to say anything bad about his parents. But he remembered Jimmy’s mother yelling at the boy for getting beaten up, and a hot bolt of anger shot through him. “Sir, his parents don’t care,” he said loudly, and he glowered at Motley’s look of surprise. Well, somebody needed to say it, he thought.

  “Other grown-ups, then,” Motley went on. “Jimmy, surely there’s someone here who helps you out with the things you can’t do.”

  Once again, Jimmy didn’t answer, but his face gave him away, and the people within earshot became quiet. Martin saw Motley gaze searchingly at the crowd, and he knew what he was seeing. He had seen it himself where Wonder Babies were concerned. No interest. No involvement. No help.

  Motley jumped down from the platform. “All right, let’s see what we can do in fifteen minutes. Packet Chief, I’ll need some supplies: six or eight of the Soundcone wireless speakers, and I think I can work with that home musician’s keyboard that comes with the built-in console.”

  “Naturally,” Dad said, trying to suppress his bewildered expression. “I’ll talk to Bennett. He runs the store. Does a nice job of it too. In fact . . .” But Motley had already turned away. Dad walked off, muttering.

  Again, Martin found himself the object of Motley’s thoughtful stare.

  “You look like the sort of young man who knows his way around here,” he said. “As well as where to find any odds and ends I might need.”

  “Yes, sir. I spend a lot of time down here. My dad’s the packet chief.”

  “The packet chief’s son. Of course you are! Tell me, is there a room in this warehouse area where food gets stored, spilled, maybe left out in the open?”

  The produce room! Martin remembered Chip hunting rats by digging through the rotten vegetables. When he glanced down, his dog put his ears back and thumped his tail, as if to say, I didn’t mean to be right.

  “Yes, sir,” Martin said. “I think I know just the place.”

  Motley clapped a hand on Martin’s and Jimmy’s shoulders and steered them through the crowd. “Excellent! Lead me to it.”

  The produce room was bright and clean, and the cardboard crates and piles of old fruit peels and melon rinds were gone. The vegetable-cleaning bots stood unmoving at their white porcelain trough.

  “Well, normally there’s food here,” Martin said, dismayed.

  But Motley began at once to explore the place. “This is just what I had in mind.”

  Dad walked in behind them, trailing an interested crowd of Wonder Babies. “You see, no rats here,” he said with evident relief.

  “They’re behind those refrigerators,” murmured Motley.

  He soon had the whole group hunting through the storage rooms for special parts. “Steel box. Could be a packing case, empty fuel container, old locker.” When Martin found a broken refrigerator, Motley was delighted. “Perfect! Packet Chief, I need two freight bots in here.”

  The bots put the refrigerator on rollers, laid it on its side, and cut a round hole in the door. Motley emerged from a closet with a three-foot-long piece of tin pipe. He pushed the pipe into the hole, angled so that it tilted down to the ground, and then he had the freight bots weld it into place.

  “Now we need to blockade the room with something about this high.” Motley held his hand about two feet off the floor. “You wouldn’t believe how well rats can jump.”

  Martin and Dad barricaded the doorway of the produce room with a sheet of metal, pushing it firmly against the doorframe with heavy boxes. The bots rolled the refrigerator over to it. Then they cut a hole at the bottom of the barricade just wide enough for the tin pipe to stick through. Now any small animal that wanted to escape the room had to run into the tin tunnel. From there, it could only end up in the refrigerator.

  Motley found a garbage can lid big enough to close off the end of the tunnel. “This isn’t a great fit,” he said, kneeling to try it over the pipe, “but I think it’s close enough. Now, bring me a gas cylinder—the kind used for carbonated beverages.”

  Bennett showed up with the sets of speakers, and Motley stepped over the barricade to set them in various places around the room. Then he climbed back out and began fiddling with the computer display on the keyboard. When he struck a note, all six speakers in the room played it.

  “The audio is ready,” he said. “We can start. Once the rats are in this refrigerator, I’ll need the freight bots to pull it away from the door and turn it onto its back. And then I’ll need a small hole punched in the side of the tin pipe, just big enough to fit this nozzle.” He held up the carbon dioxide cylinder. Martin wanted to ask what it was for, but he thought that might make him seem stupid.

  “Jimmy, right after that, you’ll need to find your rat,” Motley continued. “You won’t have much time. You can’t be squeamish. I’ll help you. Does he have any distinguishing marks?”

  “He’s piebald, white with black patches,” Jimmy said. “His left ear is white, and his right ear is black.” Jimmy’s face was paler than before. He looked as if he were hoping and trying not to hope at the same time.

  Motley concentrated on his little keyboard, holding down one note. “It’s not working,” Dad said. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “You can’t,” Motley said. “But they can.”

  At first, all was silent. Then came a flurry of rustling and protesting squeaks. From beneath the refrigerators poured a tide of small furry bodies, fleeing the noiseless waves of sound.

  “Rats!” cried Dad in dismay.

  The rats were dammed up for a few seconds at the steel barricade, scrambling this way and that, before they found the metal tunnel and hurried in. Motley watched them flow into his trap. When the last one entered, he clapped the garbage can lid over the end.

  “Got them! Now, pull the trap out and set it on its back.”

  The bots rolled the refrigerator away from the hole in the barricade. As they moved it, Motley had to shift his lid, and several dark forms sprang from the end of the pipe and sped into the crowd of Wonder Babies, causing the children to jump and squeal. But within seconds, the refrigerator rested on its back with the section of pipe sticking straight into the air, and Motley’s lid once again covered the end.

  “A few got away,” he remarked, gazing after the vanished rodents. “But I’m fairly sure they were regular black ones.”

  A muted but insistent scuffling came from within the refrigerator trap, augmented by louder scrapings inside the pipe. Motley showed one of the freight bots where to punch a hole, shoved the nozzle into it, and began releasing the gas.

  “It can leak out at the top,” Dad observed.

  “Carbon dioxide is heavier than air,” Motley said, listening to the sound of the rats inside the refrigerator.

  Soon the frantic rustling subsided. When all was quiet, Motley wrenched open the refrigerator door.
Inside the insulated box lay the still shapes of dozens of rats. Motley and Jimmy quickly dug through them to get to the ones underneath.

  “Here he is!” Jimmy lifted out a limp form. “Patches!” He pulled off his sweater to make a pillow for the rat, and the Wonder Babies crowded around him to stare at the prodigal rodent.

  Dad came forward to peer inside the refrigerator. “I get it,” he said. “You used the gas to sedate them.”

  “To knock them out, yes,” Motley said, shutting the refrigerator door. “And kill them, if they breathe it long enough. Why don’t you pull that water hose over here and fill this up? That will finish them off.”

  While Dad fetched the hose to exterminate the contents of the refrigerator, Motley came over to check on Jimmy’s rat. Patches was starting to stir feebly, cuddled in the safety of his owner’s arms.

  “You solved my problem!” breathed Jimmy, and his face was streaked with tears. “I was sure I’d never see him again.”

  Motley put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder and studied the piebald pet. “Your rat wears motley too,” he said softly. “That fits. Let’s go now. I have to get back to my packet.”

  “Don’t leave,” Jimmy pleaded, walking beside him. “You knew exactly what to do. You know things we want to learn, and no one would mind if you stayed.”

  Motley smiled down at him. “I have a better idea.”

  They returned to the big funeral room. As Dad pushed through the crowd, Mr. Bennett tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I had Frank run home and see if we were all on television,” he said. “The only thing on the sets was a blue screen. Maybe that means we’re on. If we’re on, we can’t see ourselves, right?”

  Motley climbed back aboard the platform of his red packet car. With his good looks and flashy clothing, he did look as if he belonged on television.

  “Citizens of HM1!” he called. “Here is your problem. These small children, these Wonder Babies, are taxing your patience, and they themselves are unhappy. They cannot meet your expectations of them any more than you can meet theirs. Your school cannot teach them, and more than anything, they want to learn. They have special needs that cannot be met under your steel dome.”