Smek for President Read online

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Either which way, I need a workshop,” said J.Lo. “I am needing a place with parts, where I can build something to help us. Back on Old Boovworld there was a big field near Bigfield where we puts broken things: kroosers, bubbleships, outdated telecloners.”

  I nodded. “I’ve been to a place like that,” I said.

  * * *

  The Chief had taken me there. Shortly after the Boov left Earth, back when we were still living in the casino just outside Tucson.

  “Where are we going again?” I asked him. He was driving us in his pickup around the south side of the city, toward the air force base. Lincoln sat between us like a chaperone, his hamburger-sized paws on the dash.

  “Junkyard,” the Chief answered.

  I was quiet for a couple exits.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t date much when you were younger, did you?” I asked.

  “You’ll like it,” he said. “Trust me.”

  When it came into view, I knew he was right.

  “The Three Hundred Ninth Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group,” he announced. “Commonly known as the Boneyard.”

  It was this vast dirt parking lot filled with airplanes, and not just airplanes: it was a rest home for every kind of plane and helicopter you could think of. A dry ocean. Big bombers like beached whales. Monster-movie dragonflies and prehistoric predators with teeth painted right onto their nose cones. Some decrepit, or picked clean—just a rib cage in the sun. Others protected by muzzles and blindfolds of white vinyl.

  “I guess that’s pretty cool,” I whispered.

  I don’t think we were supposed to be able to walk around in it like we did, but back in those days there was a lot of stuff that people forgot to keep an eye on. I hadn’t realized we were looking for anything in particular until the Chief stopped by a little single-seat airplane with bent wings and a propeller.

  “Here it is,” he said. “The F-4-U Corsair. Flew an early prototype in World War Two.”

  It looked like nothing so much as a huge model kit. It looked pretty great, actually—even if it was falling apart.

  The Chief patted its blunt nose. “I was part of a crack team of young volunteers in the days before we were officially in the war. The Teen Platoon, they called us.”

  “That’s a cute name.”

  “Cute!” The Chief blew a raspberry. “We saved the president! Fought saboteurs! There was me, Smoky, Zero, Sikh and Destroy, this little midget guy—we never did learn his real name...”

  I stared at him a moment. It sounded like a comic book. I said, “Chief? Did any of that really happen?”

  He frowned at the Corsair. “Doesn’t sound too likely, does it.”

  “I mean, I’ve never heard about any of this, and I watch a lot of History Channel.”

  Lincoln came back from wherever he’d been exploring, and licked the Chief’s hand, and took off again.

  “Weren’t allowed to talk about it,” the Chief said. “Classified. Shouldn’t even be telling you.” After this he started walking, so I fell in behind him.

  “I’m glad you are,” I said. “Telling me. We’re both secret heroes! We should have masks and a lair.”

  He was quiet for a bit. “I worry about you,” he said finally.

  “That’s sweet. I worry about you too.”

  “No, I mean...it’s a punishing life, living with secrets. You’re gonna have a weird, crazy-making road ahead if you think the world owes you but you won’t tell ’em why. Or even if you did tell ’em—ours is a nation that likes to forget.”

  “So I’ll have a hard life. Lots of people have hard lives.”

  “Sure, an’ not all of ’em can handle it with grace an’ dignity like I did.”

  I looked at him flatly. “Chief,” I said. “Back in Roswell you were known mostly for living in a junkyard and shouting at tourists.”

  He nodded. “Do you remember my spaceship?”

  Of course I did. Back in New Mexico the Chief had had a genuine Boovish rocketpod. An old experimental model that had crashed there in 1947 with only a koobish riding inside. He’d kept it in his basement, covered in papier-mâché and tinfoil with a TV antenna on top. Like a flying saucer a little kid would make. If anyone came looking for the famous Roswell UFO, he’d just happily show it to them and they’d go away again.

  “All that tinfoil kept it safe,” said the Chief. “All those years. And my crazy Indian act kept me sane—same thing. That make any sense?”

  “Nope,” I told him. But I took his hand anyway.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t sound like it was gonna.”

  * * *

  “Are you okaynow?” asked J.Lo. “You have gone spacey. We have to keep to moving.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know about any big fields,” I said, “but I do know a place with a lot of junk.”

  “Ohyes?”

  As we crept and crawled along beneath bubble buildings and windowsills, I filled J.Lo in on all the stuff that had happened to me since we were separated.

  “We should go visit this Funsize!” said J.Lo. “Sounds like he would have himself some quality garbages.”

  “Yeah, except he’s the guy who just tried to kill us.”

  J.Lo flinched. “Is it true? Whynow?”

  I shook my head. “He blames you for losing him his job,” I said. “It was a pretty weak argument, honestly. But you heard that guy back at the jail. He knew me. He called me Gratuity. And they both have similar tastes in masks.”

  “Wellthen. Somesplace else. Somesplace with parts so to I can build something.”

  “To help us get home,” I agreed, “where we can send a message to all the Boov and tell them what you did.”

  J.Lo wiggled his fingers. “Or...” he said. “Or, we finds a way for sending the message first, then leave.”

  We looked at each other. I really really wanted to get home.

  “You don’t think we should just try to escape as fast as possible?”

  “But seenow? If first we send a message, then the escaping will be easier. Because then no Boov will stop us.”

  “If they believe you, that is.”

  “If they believes me, yes.”

  I sighed. I ached all over just to go back to Earth and hit the redo button and pretend this whole trip had never happened. It was an iffy plan, and it required my mom to get amnesia for some reason, but wasn’t mine a nation that forgets? I remembered somebody telling me that at some point.

  “The Chief did all this crazy stuff in World War Two,” I told J.Lo. “It was all classified, so when he came out of the army, nobody knew he was a hero; they just thought he was some random Indian with a shoplifting arrest on his record from when he was eighteen.” I winced. “I don’t even think he wanted credit for the good stuff anymore, at the end. I think he just wanted to be forgiven for everything else.”

  “Yes,” said J.Lo. “Forgiven.” He smiled sadly.

  “Okay,” I said. “Message first.”

  We heard a distant shout then. So we ducked and squeezed ourselves into the black shadow beneath a ramp.

  “Oranges!” came the shout again, getting closer. “Fancy oranges!”

  “I guess we’re lucky there haven’t been more people on the streets,” I whispered. “That part of town we were in earlier was hopping.”

  “Eh, that was the city hub,” J.Lo whispered back. “Thishere is more of a huburb.”

  “‘Suburb,’” I corrected.

  J.Lo fidgeted. “Pretty sure it is ‘huburb,’” he said.

  “Oranges here!” the voice shouted, closer.

  It was all little bubble houses up and down this alley, and dim floating lamps, and a sucktunnel opening a few doors down. After another minute, a Boov pulling a hoverwagon passed.

  We sat there shivering as a door opened right above us and someone came tramping down the ramp.

  “I will pay you for sixteen oranges!” said this new Boov.

&n
bsp; The orange salesman paused near the sucktunnel and they did business. Sixteen oranges were parceled out from beneath the wagon’s lid, and then the buyer trotted back up the ramp, carrying them in a plastic basket.

  After the Boov was back inside and the orange vendor had turned to leave, I whispered, “Man, we’re lucky neither one of them saw—”

  J.Lo pushed me out into the light of the alley.

  “Quickly!” he said. “Go pretend to buy oranges. Your face was never onto the television!”

  I hesitated, then started jogging toward the vendor. “Great,” I muttered through my teeth. “A J.Lo plan. Hey! Hello?” I added, louder. “I wanna buy some oranges too.”

  He’d barely gotten his hovercart going before he stopped again and turned to look at me in wonder. Didn’t get a lot of human customers, I suppose.

  “Ahnow,” he said. “This is a surprise. Am I speaking to the famous Earthman Dan Landry?”

  “In the flesh!” I said as I came to a stop, puffing. You’d think with all the fleeing I did that I’d be in better shape.

  “And you have a bluzzer!” he added. “For some reason.” I glanced up to my left and found Bill swaying beside my ruined Afro puff.

  “A homing bluzzer,” I agreed. “They gave it to me so I wouldn’t get lost.”

  “Ahyes. And how many oranges can I get you, Earthma—” he started to ask, but then there was an approaching patter and J.Lo galloped up and pushed the orange vendor into the sucktunnel and FOOMP he was gone.

  “Oh,” I said. As J.Lo plans went, that was pretty cut-and-dry.

  “Fast now!” J.Lo shouted. “Before he returns!” He popped the lid off the cart, emptied all but maybe a dozen oranges out of it, climbed inside, and pulled the lid back over him as I finally caught on. I grabbed the hovercart’s handle and ran off with it into the fog.

  FOURTEEN

  After hours of pulling the cart through the dark alleys, accidentally selling two oranges, and getting as far as possible away from our jailbreak, we needed a rest.

  “We have got to get out of the open,” I told him when we had an alley to ourselves for a moment. “Don’t you think? Don’t you think they’ve probably told everyone to be on the lookout for humans by now?”

  “Lookthere!” he said, peeking through a gap in the lid. “Try that door!”

  It was a typical little bubble house, up a ramp about ten feet from the street, with a wriggling heap of koobish out front. J.Lo explained that the owner must get regular koobish delivery, but since the koobish were piling up on the doorstep, he probably wasn’t home. I dragged us both up the ramp, thinking it couldn’t possibly be as easy as just trying the door, but then we did and it was. Apparently nobody locks their homes on New Boovworld.

  So I finally got a shower and a full night’s sleep.

  I dreamed my mom was running for Mom. She’d thought it was a lifetime appointment, like a Supreme Court justice, but now elections were coming up and she had competition. I never could get a good look at this competitor. Like, they’d show her on TV, but the camera was always blurry, or else my eyes were. And all I’d make out was a shape, a Bigfoot, a Loch Ness Monster.

  Mom and I were staying up all night making campaign posters with student council–quality slogans like MOM upside-down is WOW! and Mom for Mom: it Just Makes ¢ents, whatever that meant. Soon I couldn’t read the sign I was making at all. Which got me anxious, because I knew they were expecting me to read it in front of everybody, and then it turned into one of those stage-fright dreams where I was up at the podium and didn’t know what was expected of me.

  Silence in the audience. Silence plus a cough, which was worse. And my mom standing at the other podium, across the stage from me, mouthing the word Why? with the strangest look on her face….

  And that was what I woke to. On the floor I woke, with a foam pillow under my head and a koobish sniffing my hair.

  I rolled over and looked up at the koobish. Its walleyed oven-mitt face stared back at me. “Morning,” I said.

  “Maa-ah.”

  The koobish moved on—and now I had an unobstructed view of the bedroom mirror, and of the stupid decision I’d made about my hair when I was tired.

  In my sleep I’d forgotten that I’d lost an Afro puff when that masked Boov had shot at us. Where once I’d had a little topiary ball, now I had a radar dish. So after my shower I’d asked J.Lo to find me a scissors or something to even it out, and consequently I had two radar dishes.

  But he’d used those scissors to get my collar off, too, so that felt good. He took it apart and stripped the wires out of it, mumbling something like, “For to magnetizing the humblescrews.” At the time I was too busy falling asleep to care.

  I got up and looked around the bubble house.

  It was like this: The outer walls were a big fishbowl that cycled air in and out and filtered it and made it room temperature. The innermost layer of the glass was also bioluminescent—did I spell that right? It was glowy. It did this neat trick where it shone, facing in, so that the rooms all had this nice Christmas-light glow but people outside could only see frosty brightness. J.Lo told me that if you stared at any point on the wall long enough, it turned transparent to let you see outside, so I tried not to do that.

  Inside the fishbowl were a number of ramped platforms and a couple of smaller bubbles for the bedroom and bathroom. The shower was an antigravity capsule in which you got sprayed by a thousand nozzles in every direction and was more fun than a ride at Happy Mouse Kingdom.

  I descended the ramp from the bedroom to find J.Lo and about a half dozen koobish. The koobish were just milling about, nuzzling things. They were making the room smell like bleach.

  “You are up!” J.Lo said with a smile. A big curved screen was silently playing a cooking show behind him. This screen was linked by silver tubes to a liver-shaped plastic box, which J.Lo had disassembled on a blanket in front of him.

  “Hey,” I said. “You get any sleep? Have you been watching the news?”

  “A little sleep. I had to been watching the news, but it was alls same-o same-old. Here.”

  He tapped at something inside the box, and the screen flipped through a couple more cooking shows before settling on a news station. Smek was holding a press conference in that same big office of his we’d visited earlier. J.Lo turned up the sound.

  J.Lo turned the sound down. “I can begin it over from the start, if you like,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Where’s Bill?”

  At the sound of his name the little bluzzer bluzzed into the room.

  HELLO.

  “Hey, Bill! You look better!”

  YES.

  “I could to unpoke some of his dings and swab out his foozpipe,” said J.Lo.

  “I was going to recommend that,” I said. “Is it...is it normal for him to be like this? Are billboard bluzzers usually this smart and helpful?”

  NO.

  “Not usualies,” J.Lo agreed. “But this sort of thing can sometimes to happen. If a robot is for too long frustrated at its job.”

  Bill was slaloming in and out of koobish’s ears. They tried to nip at him as he passed.

  “I don’t understand that,” I admitted. “Frustrated?”

  J.Lo set down the pieces he was fiddling with. “Yes. Aslike...a robot who always wants to do, but it cannot do. When we wants to do something but cannot, that is when we think. When our consciousness awakes up and stretches its arms. That is when we imagine, and plan, and dream about the undone thing. Ignored for too long and not able to show anyBoov his message, Bill developed a bug. Some bad code. A...glitch.”

  I felt weird talking about Bill right in front of him like this. After he zoomed up the ramp to the bedroom, I said, “A glitch? Bill can think. Like he’s alive. He might be as smart as a person—that’s not a glitch.”

  J.Lo gave me a sad look. “Peoples are glitches,” he said.

  He returned to his work. “Their worlds do not want them,” he co
ntinued. “A fox? It knows how to be a fox. Any koobish is the number one expert at being a koobish. But peoples? Boov and humans and Gorg and Habadoo and suchlike? We are the only ones who don’t know how to be. Who do not know the right things to do.”

  I didn’t know what to do or say for a minute, so I sat down next to the blanket. As the koobish shifted around, I saw more things—appliances, computers, and whatnot—all with their cases opened and their insides disassembled.

  “So,” I said. “Are we sure the Boov who lives here isn’t coming home soon?”

  “Pretty sure. I found his itinerary in his message box: Mr. M’Pillowclock is spending two Earth weeks camping on Mars with his work group. He just forgot to cancel his koobish delivery.”

  “And so you’re taking all his stuff apart for him...why?”

  J.Lo grinned. “Just working onto a couple of projects. Do you remembers when I mentioned about to making a time machine?”

  My insides felt ten times heavier. “You’re making a time machine?”

  “Eh. I am only playing around.”

  I looked around at all the parts. “So it’s possible? Time travel?”

  “To the future?” said J.Lo. “Yes. Always. We do it alls the time, in miniature ways. But to the past? Also yes. But harder. Takes a crazy lot of power. Anyone who has ever traveled in a faster-than-light starship has traveled backward in time a little. And I believe such a person has then a Time River that flows through alls their past selves. Such a person could swim against the current of that river, and revisit events that have already beforenow happened to them. But it takes a buffaload of energy to swim against the current.”

  “I keep meaning to talk to you about that word of yours,” I said. “‘Buffaload.’ The term is ‘buttload,’ pardon my language. There’s no such word as ‘buffaload.’”

  “I invented it! It means a buffalo’s load.”

  “Whatever—so could I go back in time?” I asked, because maybe I could visit the past and talk both of us out of coming here to New Boovworld in the first place.