Odds Are Good (18 page)

When he put it that way, it was hard to answer.

Still, it was a strange thing to sit down to dinner with some of the most important people on the planet and have them punctuate their conversation with gaseous emissions.

I had no idea how the guys from the planet whose people dare not speak its name were taking all this, since they barely talked at all. But they've been dealing with the Kwarkissians for centuries, so presumably they cope with it just fine.

The real trouble started
after
dinner, when we all went into the water room for dessert.

Every home on Kwarkis has a water room. It's one of my favorite things about living here. Basically it's a huge room with a multilevel stone floor. Clear water runs down one wall, then flows through streambeds into pools and ponds that dot the floor. There are even a few small waterfalls. Some of the ponds have fish—well, they're not really fish, but that's close enough for you to understand. Also, there are a lot of plants and a few flying things that are sort of like birds.

The Kwarkissians spend a lot of their free time in the water rooms; they're a great place to chat and relax.

Well, we went there for dessert—at least, Dad and I were having dessert (gooey chocolate pie, to be precise). The Kwarkissians were chewing purple leaves, which is what they like to do after dinner. The guys from Planet X were just sort of watching us. I got the impression they don't do much of anything for fun on their planet.

While we were sitting there, Ralph J. Bear wandered in. I flinched, remembering that Dad had told me to keep Ralph in my room that night. I glanced at Dad. He didn't seem upset, but this didn't give me any useful information; Dad's training as a diplomat makes him
very
good at masking his real feelings. Certainly his face gave me no clue as to the kind of trouble I was about to get myself into.

When our guests saw Ralph they all wanted to pick him up—which seems to be an almost universal reaction to the little guy. At Dad's suggestion, I showed him around. Everyone liked him. Even the guys from the planet with a secret name seemed to lighten up at the sight of him.

A little while later Nnnnnn tucked one long green hand under his robe and pulled out something that looked like a picture frame, the kind that you can open like a book. He opened it, looked inside, nodded, smiled in a sad kind of way, then started to pass it around. Each person who looked into it first appeared startled, and then—well, a strange look would cross his or her face. Sometimes it was happy, sometimes sad, but in all cases it was intense.

I couldn't wait for it to come to me.

I was sitting next to Fifka's mother. I had taken off my shoes, and we both had our legs dangling in the water. (Kwarkissians don't wear shoes, since the soles of their two-toed feet are like leather.)

When the thing the nameless-planet guys were passing around came to Fifka's mom, she looked into it and sighed. Then she passed it on to me.

Dad moved forward, as if to stop me from taking it, then settled back against the mossy stone on which he was sitting. He looked worried, a slight slip in his diplomatic mask. That should have been a warning to me. But I was too eager to see what was inside the frame, so I ignored the expression on his face.

Big mistake.

Taking the frame, I opened it, and cried out in shock when I saw my mother looking out at me. Mom had died six years earlier, in a small war in Asia she had been covering for the
New York Times
, and I mostly tried not to think about her, because it hurt too much. Now she was smiling at me as if she had never been gone.

I closed my eyes.

“The heartmirror sends a signal that generates an image from the brain,” said Nnnnnn. “It pulls from the mind that which is deeply buried—that which you love, or fear, or wish most to see. What you see in the frame comes from yourself.”

I opened my eyes again. My mother's face was still there, smiling at me. “It's wonderful,” I said.

Nnnnnn's eyes narrowed in his green face. He made a sharp gesture, almost as if he were angry. “It is yours,” he said gruffly.

My stomach tightened as I remembered Dad's warning: “Don't compliment them on anything they show you.”

Suddenly I wished I had read that printout. What had I just done?

The room was silent, a heavy kind of silence that I found very frightening.

“Thank you,” I said at last, nodding toward Nnnnnn.

More silence. Then Nnnnnn said, “Your pet is wonderful, as well.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

For a time the only sound in the water room was that of the water rolling down the wall, across the floor. The tension among the beings who sat around me was distinctly uncomfortable. I got the sense that they were waiting for something. I also had an idea
what
, but I tried to convince myself that I was wrong.

Finally Fifka's mother leaned over and whispered, “Nnnnnn is waiting for you to offer him your pet.”

I felt as if she had hit me in the stomach.

Nnnnnn just sat there, staring at me.

Jumping up, I grabbed Ralph and ran from the room.

 

I was lying on my bed, holding Ralph and staring up through my ceiling—which I had set on “clear”—when my father came in. His face was dark with anger.

I ignored him and continued to stare at the moons. They were all out, one at full, one at the half, and one no more than a tiny crescent.

“Jacob, did you read that printout?” he asked.

I shook my head. A tear escaped from the corner of my eye. I was half-embarrassed at crying, half-hopeful that it might get me out of this mess.

Dad sighed.

“Why can't we just give Nnnnnn back the heartmirror?” I asked, trying to fight down the lump in my throat.

“If we do that, it will mark us as unworthy trading partners. Jacob, we have to follow through on this. It is a matter of honor for Nnnnnn and his people.”

“So you want me to give Ralph to this guy just because he thinks I'm an adult and I got caught in some weird ritual that I didn't even know was going on? Forget it!”

I had overplayed my hand.

“If you had read the information I gave you, you would have been well aware of the custom,” Dad snapped back. “Even ignoring that, you knew you were supposed to keep Ralph in your room. If you had done as I asked, none of this would have happened!”

He had me. I decided the best tactic was to ignore that fact and move on.

“Well, they can just go back to the nameless place they came from,” I said defiantly. “I'm not giving Ralph to Nnnnnn. For all I know the guy just wants to eat him!”

Ralph whined and snuggled closer, and I felt a twinge of guilt. No one is sure just how much human language the little guys can understand. I hoped I hadn't scared him.

“Jacob, listen to me. Forging a good relationship with Nnnnnn and his group is—well, it could be a matter of life and death. The implications for Earth are overwhelming, and we simply can't afford a diplomatic incident right now. I'm sorry, but I have to insist . . .”

I knew he meant it.

I also knew that I was not going to give Ralph to some weirdo from a nameless planet.

Which meant I also knew what I
was
going to do.

I remembered what Fifka had said about the important choices, that they had to do with the mind and the heart.

My mind and my heart were both telling me the same thing right now. I didn't like what they were saying, but when I thought about it, it wasn't a choice at all. Running away was my only option.

 

The trees were singing their night song as I slipped into the forest. The sky was darker now because the full moon had set, leaving only the two partial moons.

A buttersnake slithered around the base of one of the trees and stared at me in astonishment. (It wasn't really a snake, of course—that's just what Dad and I call them. They're bright yellow and can spread themselves out so flat they look like melted butter. They can go from flat to round in half a second when they are startled or angry. I tried not to make this one angry.)

Ralph J. Bear clung to my neck, looking around with bright eyes and whimpering once or twice when shadows moved too close to us.

“It's all right, Ralph,” I whispered. “We'll find someplace where we can hide until this blows over. Or maybe we'll hide out forever,” I added, thinking that I couldn't see any good reason to go back at this point. I was tired of being the alien, the weird one, the outcast.

I remembered Toby, and wondered if this was how he had felt.

Toby had been the dumbest kid in my class, back in the last school I had been in before Dad and I moved to Kwarkis. He was okay, but he just wasn't with it. Some of the kids were mean to him, which I thought was stupid. Most of us pretty much ignored him.

I felt bad about that now. I wanted to go back and put an arm around him, like Fifka had put three arms around me, and tell him that I liked him. Which was true, now that I thought about it. He was a nice kid and never did anything to hurt anyone. I had always figured that he didn't add anything to the class, but now that I thought about it, I realized that just his being there had been important. He was part of who we were, and we would have been different without him.

I wondered how the kids in Darva Preet's class felt about me. Did they think about me at all? Would they miss me, now that I was gone—or would they just be relieved that they didn't have a two-armed gimp around to deal with anymore? Did I make the class more or less than it had been when I came to it?

I was so wound up in my thoughts that I hardly noticed where I was going, hardly noticed Nnnnnn standing in my path until I almost bumped into him.

“Do you think this is wise?” he asked, his voice deep and solemn. He didn't sound mean, but there was something very frightening about him. I think it was simply that he was so sure of himself.

I stared at him, unable to speak.

He knelt in front of me and looked directly into my eyes.

“Are you an adult, or are you a child?” he asked.

My throat was dry, my stomach tightening into a knot of fear and despair. I remembered what my father had told me about the way Nnnnnn and his people felt about kids. Running away was one thing—without me around, Dad might have been able to skinny his way out of the mess I had created. (Though when I stopped to think about it, I realized he would have turned that forest inside out to find me, no matter what it meant to the deal.) But face-to-face defiance of the diplomat from another planet was something else altogether.

The silence lay thick between us. Nnnnnn continued to stare into my eyes. I realized that there was no way I could lie to him.

“Are you an adult, or are you a child?” he repeated.

I swallowed hard, then told him the truth.

“I'm both.”

Nnnnnn nodded, which seemed to mean the same thing on his planet as on ours. “I suspected as much. Come with me.”

He turned and walked away. I could have run in the other direction, but I didn't. I followed him.

We left the forest. The purple trees were singing the song they sing when the sky is clear. I cradled Ralph in my arms.

Nnnnnn led me to the bank of a stream. We sat and looked up at the stars.

I knew what he was showing me, or at least I thought I did. He was showing me the community that Earth was being invited to join—or might be invited to join, if I didn't screw things up.

Are you an adult, or are you a child?

The question burned in my ears. My father had given me the printout. He had told me to keep Ralph in my room. He had warned me not to compliment our guests on anything they showed us.

Every bit of the trouble I was in was my own fault.

“Will you take good care of Ralph?” I asked, my voice thin and whispery, like dry leaves sliding against one another.

Nnnnnn was silent for a moment. At first I thought he was trying to decide how to answer the question. Later, I realized that what he was debating was whether to answer it at all.

Finally he nodded.

“I will,” he said.

Trying hard not to cry, to keep the part of me that was an adult in charge, I lifted Ralph from my neck. Pressing him to my cheek, I wiped my tears against his fur, then passed him to Nnnnnn.

I wanted to say, “You don't know what this means.” I wanted to say, “I am so lonely, and he is my closest friend.” I wanted to say, “I hate you.”

I said nothing.

Nnnnnn took Ralph from my hands. He placed him in his lap and stroked his fur. The water rippled past Nnnnnn's green feet. The stars filled the sky, the clear sky of Kwarkis, in an abundance we never see through the soiled air of Earth.

“Over there, that way, is my home,” said Nnnnnn. “It is a sacred place of great beauty. I do not like to be away from it.”

I wondered why he was telling me this, then realized that it was a kind of gift. In saying this he was speaking to me as one adult to another.

He turned to look directly at me. “We have things that will bring your world much benefit, Jacob—things of beauty, things of value. We have medical technology, for example, that will mean that many who might have died in the next year will live, instead.”

I thought for a moment. “If I had known that, I would have given you Ralph without so much fuss. I would have hated you for it, but I would have given him to you.”

“Of course you would have. That was not the issue. We are a trading race. It was not your compassion for your own kind that mattered to us; it was your honor. Can we trust you? That was what we needed to know.”

“Can you?” I asked, my voice small. “I had to be pushed.”

He stopped me. “Your impulses are good,” he said softly.

We sat in silence for a moment. Finally Nnnnnn moved his green hand in a circle, indicating the stream, the forest, the city. “I know you feel like an alien here,” he said softly. “But that is because you are thinking too small. Yes, you are from another world. So am I. If we think of ourselves only as citizens of those worlds, then here we are indeed the aliens. But think in larger terms, Jacob.” He swept his hand in a half circle across the sky. “Look at the grandness of it. You are a part of that, as well. Your planet, my planet, Kwarkis—they are all a part of something bigger. If you think in terms of planets, then here you will always be an alien. But you and your people can be more, if you choose. You can be citizens of the universe. If you see yourself that way, you will never be an alien, no matter where you go. You will simply be—one of us.”