Smek for President Read online

  “It does not do?”

  “No, I mean, look at all the stories in books and movies and whatever. You’ll just end up being the cause of whatever you’ve gone back to prevent.”

  “Ahyes. I know these stories. I think that is a lazy author problem, not a time travel problem.” He smiled. After a moment he seemed to think we’d settled it, and he went back to poking at the gray thing with the pink thing.

  “Then...don’t do it because I’m asking you not to do it,” I said. “Don’t do it for me.”

  “For...you?” I could see he didn’t understand. “You are saying you...wish for to have the Gorg did come?”

  I puzzled through that hall of mirrors and decided yes, that was probably what I was saying. J.Lo was speaking English, as he always did when it was just the two of us, but the grammar of time travel was giving him more trouble than usual.

  “Yeah. I mean, why mess with it? Everything turned out okay.”

  “Ha! This is one of those humansjokes I do not get? Everything has not done turned out okay.”

  “Sure it has!” I said, faking enthusiasm. “Sure! The Gorg retreated! Now your people will know how to fight them if they ever come back! And the Boov see now that you’re the hero you really are. I mean, I don’t want the humans to know about my part in the whole deal, but...”

  J.Lo seemed to be turning it over in his mind. “No,” he said finally. “It willto have done been better after I will had cancel the signal, I am thinking. You are worried that we will never had became friends? I think we will have did. Listen, I have a plan—”

  “J.Lo!” I stopped him. I was hacking at the air with my hands, angry with him for making me say it. “J.Lo. How will we get rid of the Boov?”

  Quiet. Just the hum of the diggers.

  “Ahyes,” J.Lo said. “The Boov. I can to make it so that the Gorg did never have come, but Gratuity wants to know how we get rid of the Boov.”

  He called me Gratuity. Which he only ever does when he’s mad.

  “They...never would have given Earth back if the Gorg hadn’t come,” I said. “I know how to get rid of Gorg. I never did figure out the Boov.”

  “Gratuity,” he said. “A thousand brave Boov died fighting the Gorg. A thousand people.”

  And then I saw them: a thousand Boov crowding his shoulders, weighing him down. He’d been carrying them around with him for a year and a half—why hadn’t I seen them before?

  “Alls of them. Deadnow. Because of a mistake I made. What about them?”

  I searched my hands for the answer, stupidly. Like on my palms were everybody’s lifelines, like I could read them and see where they’d lead if we acted, see where they’d end if we did nothing.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted with a weak shrug. “I don’t know about them. But what about seven billion humans? Moved out of their homes? Treated like dumb animals?”

  J.Lo got up, marched around gathering up junk in his arms. “I cannot have this conversation. I will go back, I will have done stopped the signal. Because it will then seemlike the antenna malfunctioned, theretofore past J.Lo will not to leave the antenna farm too quickly, and he/me will still then have met Gratuity. Gratuity will still have teached to me the true meaning of humanskind. So I will convince then the Boov to leave. That is how we get rid of the Boov.”

  “But why would the Boov listen to y—”

  “Have you not noticed now? I am very famous and beloved!”

  “But only because—”

  He dropped all his stuff and waved his little hands. “I will get famous and beloved for some others thing! I will discover a hilarious song! Or the cure for bigface!”

  “Okay, you know what?” I said, stiff as a pin. “Forget it. Go monkey around with the past. And when you get around to the part where we’re supposed to meet and make friends? Don’t bother!”

  I thundered out, my face a hot mess. J.Lo shouted something after me, but my mole didn’t translate it. Or couldn’t.

  Must’ve been pretty bad.

  NINETEEN

  “Where you goin’, kid?” the Chief asked me.

  “You know where I’m going,” I muttered as I crossed rooms to elevators and walked up ramps to Level 4. Palace workers paused to look at me, but I didn’t look back. Eyes forward, walking briskly but not running, I looked like I was supposed to be there. Like I had urgent business. Don’t bother the human with stupid questions; she obviously has somewhere to be. “You disappointed in me too?” I asked the Chief. “You going to abandon me like everybody else?”

  Ahead of me was a skywalk. At the end of that was Dan Landry’s door.

  The Chief eyed me. “What in God’s name are you talking about, Stupidlegs?”

  “J.Lo’s abandoning me. Bill...abandoned me. You died. My dad was never around, and Mom...”

  I trailed off, without a clue how to finish that sentence. The Chief blew a raspberry.

  “You know, I’ll wager the Spook thinks you abandoned him. Bill just got his feelings hurt, but cut him some slack—he’s new at feelings. I loved you like a granddaughter, and your pa didn’t know he had a kid and still doesn’t. And please explain about your ma—”

  “All right, I know—”

  “—’cause to the casual observer it looks more like you’re the one who flew eight hundred million miles away from her.”

  “All right!”

  I frowned. But there wasn’t any time to think about it. The Chief was gone and I was looking at the door to room 4-440. My own ravaged face was reflected back in its mirror finish.

  When it opened, I couldn’t look Dan Landry in the eye. Mostly I just didn’t want him to know I’d been crying.

  “Gratuity Tucci, as I live and breathe,” he said. “Made up your mind so fast?”

  I sniffed, and stared at his shoes. They were nice shoes.

  “I just want to go home,” I said quietly.

  He stood aside and let me in.

  It was a big suite, with plush furniture and a giant screen and end tables everywhere. Emerson was reading a comic book atop a big blue pouf. He looked surprised to see me.

  “I told Captain Smek about our arrangement,” said Landry. He put his hand on the small of my back and steered me across the room. “He furnished me with a device that will let you interrupt all the video feeds the same way your little friend did. We think it’s important that it look the same, you understand me?”

  “And then I go back home?” I asked. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. I had the Boov find your car. They’ll tow it all the way back to Earth with you in it. I told you I’m a man who can make things happen, Gratuity. Now: Do you know what you’re going to say?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t just nod; tell me.”

  I sighed. “It’s...I’m not going to go on and on saying how great you are or anything. It’s gonna be short.”

  Landry nodded and twirled his hand. He seemed to be in a hurry.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m gonna say that I’m the human, Gratuity Tucci, and that J.Lo’s my friend—”

  “Call him the Squealer, actually.”

  “That...the Squealer’s my friend, but that he lied about all that stuff he said. The whole story. That I went along with it because...he’s my friend. But I know and everyone on Earth knows that Dan Landry defeated the Gorg.”

  “Fine. Smek also wants some language added about how Dan Landry was able to beat the Gorg only because Captain Smek had loosened them up first. Like they’re a pickle jar. I told him I’d write it down for you, but...” He was putting on his suit jacket and watch and looking constantly at the door. “You seem articulate enough. Just wing the Smek stuff. Or don’t, I really don’t care.”

  “You’re leaving?” asked Emerson. “Now?”

  “Pressing business,” Landry told him. “Remember what we talked about.”

  Emerson looked miserable. “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  “Gratuity? Clip the thing when you’re rea
dy to talk. Unclip it when you’re done. You’re doing the right thing. We’re all doing the right thing. Onward and upward. No regrets,” he finished as the suite door opened and closed and he was gone.

  When that much chatter is suddenly gone, it leaves kind of a dizzy vacuum in its place. I swooned and looked at my hands.

  “For a while I thought you wouldn’t come up here,” Emerson told me after a moment, with a stony expression that said he had me all figured out now.

  “Whatever,” I muttered, and turned to the TV. Another cooking show on mute. Some improbable-looking vegetable sizzled silently on a grill. A lone Boov worked over a metal grate lit by a dusky red glow. I eyed Smek’s waveform clip.

  Just do it quick, I thought, like ripping off a Band-Aid—and I took up the waveform device and snapped it in place.

  Now I was on the TV. My face, parade-balloon big.

  I thought of all the Boov all over New Boovworld, pausing in their lives, wondering what I was going to say. There was a slight delay between me and this giant girl on the screen. I’d move slightly; she’d move slightly a fraction of a second later. Like the giant girl wasn’t me, but just a show I was watching.

  And I thought, That’s how I’m going to get through this.

  I thought, It’s not me.

  The giant girl looked tired. She needed a change of clothes.

  I took a breath, the girl took a breath, and said, “Hi.”

  I could feel my heart. I imagined all of New Boovworld saying hi back.

  “I’m the human, Gratuity Tucci. J.Lo...the Squealer is my friend. And I have something really important to tell you about Dan Landry.”

  I found myself wishing I could comfort the giant girl on the screen—look at those puffy eyes, that hair. If she were my friend, I realized, I’d probably tell her to call her mother.

  (She wasn’t, though. She was about to badmouth J.Lo.)

  But then if her mother was anything like my mother, she’d be better off solving her own problems. Mom had been so not there when I was growing up that when she got sucked right out of my life by a spaceship, it was like the punch line to a joke that hadn’t been funny for years, you know?

  The sick feeling in my stomach told me that I was full of it. Even the girl on the screen was shaking her head.

  We both took a breath.

  “Don’t be like me,” I told her. “Don’t be afraid to trust people; don’t be afraid to love.”

  Of course, by telling her this, I was really telling it to a million Boov. That must have been confusing.

  “Sorry. So. I have something important to tell you about Dan Landry. Did I say that already?”

  Look at that, now—the girl just got this gleam in her eye. She looked good. She looked like someone the Chief would have liked. I couldn’t believe what she was going to say next.

  “Dan Landry is a poomp,” she said. I said.

  “A real kacknacker,” I added. “Pardon my language.”

  She had a nice smile, this girl.

  “I just thought you should know.”

  TWENTY

  I unclipped the waveform dealie and turned to leave.

  Emerson was standing between me and the door.

  “My dad asked me to keep you here,” he said. “To stop you.”

  I snorted. “Stop me?”

  Emerson swallowed. “I don’t think he’s noticed that I’m shorter than all the girls in my class.”

  I took a step toward Emerson. He took a step back.

  “So what’s your dad like?” he asked.

  The question surprised me, and I halted.

  “I...don’t know,” I said.

  “I was six when I lost my first tooth,” Emerson said. “It was in the summer, so my dad had me.”

  I couldn’t stop looking at the door. Probably made me seem rude. “Okay,” I said. I couldn’t imagine where he was going with this.

  “So I told my dad, and he said to put the tooth under my pillow that night. My best friend had already lost two teeth, so I knew about this. I knew what was coming.” He shifted. “I went to bed with the tooth under my pillow, and the next morning I found ten dollars under there instead.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this. In my house the going rate was a quarter.

  “So I ran out to the kitchen with my ten bucks,” said Emerson. “And I asked who put it under my pillow. And Dad said, ‘I did!’”

  I frowned. “What, no Tooth Fairy?”

  “That’s what I said. I asked him, ‘What about the Tooth Fairy?’ and Dad said, ‘I’m the Tooth Fairy! Me.’ Then he went back to reading his paper.”

  “Yeesh,” I said. “That’s kind of rough.”

  “It’s always...it is always always always about him.” He sighed. “When do most kids stop believing in the Tooth Fairy? Like, at what age?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “Seven or eight?”

  Emerson nodded, and looked backward at the spot where he’d last seen his father. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s when I mostly stopped too.”

  We stared at each other in silence for a minute.

  Finally he said, “Let me get the door for you.”

  And he did, and that was nice, but the gesture was sort of ruined by the six armed Boov who were standing on the skywalk outside.

  I was used to this sort of thing, but it took Emerson a minute to figure it out.

  “Wh...” he said. “What are you all doing here?”

  The Boov in the front answered as the others leveled their weapons.

  “We have been ordered to prevent the humansgirl from leaving your chambers.”

  “Oh...there...there must be some misunderstanding. My dad asked me to keep her here. He probably forgot to tell Captain Smek.”

  The Boov exchanged looks.

  “It was from your father that we received our orders,” said the Boov in front. “Captain Smek has made him a sergeant.”

  “I heard lieutenant,” said another Boov.

  “Rear admiral,” I suggested.

  Emerson was red in the face. “It was my job! My dad left me to keep her here!”

  The Boov looked back flatly. “But you failed.”

  “But my dad didn’t know I was gonna fail!”

  One of the other Boov gave him a strained smile. “Yyyyeah, he did, though.”

  Emerson was shaking a little, clenching his fists. I was afraid he might do something stupid.

  The Boov in the lead said, “Humansgirl, step back into Dan Landry’s quarters and await further instructions.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “No,” I said.

  The Boov blinked.

  “No whatnow?”

  “No, I won’t step back into Dan Landry’s quarters,” I said.

  He glanced back at his teammates, then leaned forward and addressed me.

  “But you have to step back into Dan Landry’s—”

  “But I don’t want to do it,” I said. “I don’t want to. I’m going to walk back across this skywalk and go downstairs and help my friend, ’cause he’s my friend.”

  The Boov chewed his lip. “This has never happened before,” he said. “Would you excuse us a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  Emerson and I stood there as the Boov huddled up.

  “What are we to do?” asked one.

  “Shoot her,” said another.

  “We are not allowed to shoot her. Captain Smek said so.” They looked down at their weapons.

  “I do not know why I am even carrying this thing.”

  The guards huddled closer, and I couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore. One of them leaned back and mimed a plan with his hands to the others, something to do with rope and a lot of waving and maybe a bird. Finally the knot of them opened to face me.

  “Thank you for your patience,” said the leader. “We have come to a decision; we are going to—”

  But that was when they were bombarded with bubbles and fell off the skywalk.

  “Bill!” I chee
red. “You came back!”

  The little bluzzer hovered over the now-empty skywalk.

  YES.

  Emerson was looking over the edge at the falling Boov. “They inflated their suits,” he said. “They’re all bouncing around down there.”

  “Are you still mad at me, Bill?” I asked.

  YES.

  “Why?”

  Bill spilled forth two dozen bubbles of different shapes and sizes. I couldn’t follow it.

  “You know I can’t read that, Bill.”

  Emerson stepped forward. “It says, ‘I am...mad about the bluzzer on your back.’ Oh, right—you have a bluzzer on your back; did you know that?”

  “What?” I craned my neck to look.

  Then I saw it in my reflection in the mirrored door: a little silver bee, smaller than Bill. It was on my shoulder blade. Right where Dan Landry had patted me a few hours ago.

  “Sonofa—” I whispered. I brushed at the bluzzer, and it took off. It was probably one of those homing beacons, and it had been on my back for hours. I’d led Smek and Landry right to J.Lo.

  “We have to get underground,” I said. “I think J.Lo’s in trouble.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bill and I raced across the catwalk, through a bubble room, past Boov and more Boov, down a slide, and to the elevator, and now I noticed that Emerson was following. He got into the elevator with us and took up his elevator pose, standing stock-still and facing front.

  “Um,” I said. “Are you going on this rescue with us?”

  Emerson looked at me and flushed. “Yeah! I mean, if that’s okay.”

  YES.

  I said, “Well. You know if we’re going to be rescuing my friend from anyone, it’ll be your dad. Smek too, maybe, but—your dad.”

  Emerson faced forward again. The elevator slowed. “I know. I mean, if you don’t trust me, I can take this elevator back up to our room...”

  That stung, like my own thoughts were coming back to me in the form of this weird little blond kid. The elevator door shooshed open, and Bill and I exited. Emerson stayed in there, watching us.