Randoms (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

I
spent the night in a guest room that felt like a cross between a wedding suite and a mountain-man hideout. In the morning I found a tray outside my door containing juice, some fruit, and a pastry. There was also a note telling me to come down to Ms. Price's office at exactly eleven. I was on time, because that's the kind of guy I am.

The first thing Ms. Price had me do, once she finished ignoring me for twenty minutes, was call my mother. I didn't love the idea of her being summoned to Camp David, but I supposed it was a step up from being called to the principal's office. When I spoke to her, I swore that everything was fine—better than fine—and that I really had been given an incredible opportunity. Then Ms. Price took the phone and told her a car was already on its way and she should be ready in an hour. Then she hung up on my mother.

“I suppose you'll want to meet the other children,” she said.

“What, they're here?”

She nodded. “The participating nations agreed that a single location was preferable to having alien craft zipping all over the planet. Everyone was flown in on conventional aircraft last night. They'll head up to the ship later today, and you'll join them once your affairs are settled.”

“Then, sure,” I said. “That would be great.”

She led me through a series of hallways and into what looked
like a high-level meeting room. There was a long wooden table, and on one wall were multiple video screens of the sort that allow a president to keep an eye on wars as they unfold.

Inside, I also saw the other kids from the slide show. Charles D'Ujanga and Park Mi Sun were both sitting at the table, reading through thick binders. Charles wore khaki pants, a white short-sleeved dress shirt and a tie. Tae Kwon Do Girl wore jeans and a long-sleeved patterned shirt. Her hair was cut short, and though she had seemed pretty in the picture I'd seen, her scowl made her appear a little intimidating. They both looked up when I stepped into the room. Charles grinned broadly.

Then I saw Nayana Gehlawat. She wore dark jeans and a green and gold shirt that looked like material for a sari, with a matching scarf around her neck. Her hair was long and a little wild, falling into her eyes. I was also impressed by the fact that she was sitting in a chair, legs pulled under her, reading a paperback copy of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
.

I wanted to go talk to her at once, but Charles was up and out of his chair, pumping my hand. “You must be Ezekiel Reynolds,” he said. His voice had a clipped and precise accent. “I am Charles D'Ujanga, and I am pleased to meet you.”

“Zeke,” I said. “Great to meet you too.”

Park Mi Sun looked up from her reading and gave me a brief nod. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I answered to show I could be unenthusiastic too if I wanted.

Charles interrupted our brilliant exchange. “This is truly the most amazing thing, don't you agree? There is so much to do—papers to sign and meetings and arrangements—that it is
easy to forget that we have met a being from another world, and we shall soon meet many more.”

“Dude,” I said. “Totally.” He was more articulate than I was, but I appreciated that he was having the same trouble I was in getting my head around it.

“What's in those binders you guys have?” I asked.

“They are our individual governments' directives,” he said. “You will not need one because a member of your government travels with you. I understand you are to follow us tomorrow.”

I nodded. “Assuming I can get my mother to agree to let me go.”

“I cannot imagine she would object to you having this incredible experience!” I hadn't met a lot of people who spoke with exclamation marks, but he was one of them.

“Yeah,” I said, but I knew he could probably not imagine she had ALS, either.

“I hope you will excuse me.” He gestured toward his binder. “I must demonstrate my understanding of my government's policy before I am cleared to depart.”

“Sure,” I said. I headed over to Nayana. Unlike the South Korean girl, she did not seem to have a do-not-disturb sign swinging from her psychic doorknob. As I approached, she held up the book and met my gaze. “Have you read this?” she asked. She had an extremely proper British accent, which I suspected was real and not the translator.

“Sure, like a dozen times,” I said. “It's hilarious.”

She tossed it onto the table. “Papa gave it to me before I left, but I find it far too silly.”

By some miracle of self-control I kept myself from displaying disbelief. “It's supposed to be silly. That's why it's fun.” I
chose to say nothing about Douglas Adams's connection to
Doctor Who
, because this felt like the wrong way to get on her good side.

She studied me for a long moment, as though she could not quite believe what I was saying. I, on the other hand, was wondering if it was possible to spend a year with someone who didn't like
Hitchhiker's Guide
.

“Forgive me,” she said, holding out her arm with her hand hanging limp like it had been detached. “I'm Nayana.”

“I'm Zeke,” I said, waggling the loose hand, “and of course I know who you are. You're totally famous.”

“Oh, please,” she said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “You've never heard of me. Or do you follow chess?”

“Not religiously or anything,” I said. “I don't, like, watch the Chess Network or whatever, but everyone knows about how you beat Magnus Carlsen last year.” I figured I had it, I might as well use it. “That was pretty sweet.”

“It is fine when people admire me for my skill at the game,” she assured me. And what a relief it was to learn she was okay with my admiration. “That doesn't bother me in the least, but all the reporters and cameras and magazine spreads became a bit of a bore very quickly. I suppose if I were a plain Jane they wouldn't have cared, but they were all agog to stare at the beautiful chess genius.” She shook her head sadly. “It's nothing but foolishness.”

“Yeah, foolishness,” I agreed. “For fools. And morons.”

She was now squinting. I was starting to think I might have made a better impression, but I was also starting to think that it was possible to be beautiful and a chess genius
and
kind of an unpleasant person.

“Would you be a dear and fetch me a sparkling water?” She
gestured toward a sideboard, about fifteen feet away, where drinks and snacks had been set up. “I'm
terribly
thirsty.”

I wanted to tell her that she should go fetch her own sparkling water, but I thought that there were only four of us, and antagonizing a third of my companions for the next year might be a bad move. She was almost certainly testing me, seeing if I would volunteer to be her servant when we left Earth. I didn't particularly want to be her personal butler, but I also didn't want to do anything to make her dislike me. My Spidey-sense told me she could put on a pretty fierce dislike.

I fetched her the water, and Park Mi Sun scowled at me as I did it. She clearly didn't think much of my butlering, so I guessed I had to make sure I won Nayana over. The idea of both of them hating me before we even left Earth was completely depressing.

When I came over with the bottle and a glass, she let out a world-weary sigh. “No lime?”

“I didn't see any.”

She pressed her lips together and cocked her head. “Might I trouble you to ask for some?”

Like an idiot, I did ask, and Agent McTeague, a guy who under other circumstances was supposed to take a bullet for the president, ended up both fetching limes and thinking I was the lame-o who wanted them. When I finally had the drink prepared for Nayana, she gestured to a little table next to where she sat. “Right there is fine,” she said, and picked up her binder.

I sat there in the room with the three of them reading their binders, and after five minutes I wanted to throw myself out the window. Then Ms. Price stepped into the room and told me she wanted a word.

•   •   •

We sat in a couple of chairs outside the meeting room. Ms. Price folded her hands and looked at me the way I'd once seen my mom look at a mouse she'd discovered in our kitchen, when she couldn't decide if she should chase it out of the house or crush it with a broom. Maybe that was a bad analogy, because Ms. Price seemed pretty solidly in the mouse-crushing camp.

“I want to talk to you about certain problems you may face once you leave Earth.”

“
If
I leave Earth,” I said. “My mother hasn't agreed to anything.”

“She'll agree,” Ms. Price said, flicking her fingers impatiently. “Your mother won't forbid you from helping all of humanity because she doesn't want to miss out on a year of baking cookies and tucking you in for night-night kisses.”

“Do you have children?” I asked.

She scowled. “What do you think?”

“I think you haven't been around this many people under eighteen since you graduated from high school.”

“Correct.”

“I'll try not to get on your nerves,” I told her, giving her my best smile. It was more polite than saying
You are both intense and super scary.

She sighed. “I wish we had better material to work with, but you're what we've got.”

“Thanks,” I said. I packed up the smile and put it away.

“I've read your school records. You seem to get into a lot of trouble.”

“I never cause those incidents,” I told her, hating how defensive I sounded.

She flicked an indifferent hand upward. She could not trouble herself to care. “The president exerted a lot of influence to make certain the United States provided the adult permitted to accompany the delegation. We had to promise all kinds of beneficial trade deals with India and South Korea, and offer a great deal of aid to Uganda.”

“Welcome aboard?” I offered.

Her facial tic suggested I was, once again, too slow to get the point. “It's also worth pointing out that the other species are not sending any sort of chaperone. Only Earth.”

“Why?”

“Because the other species didn't think to ask,” Ms. Price said. “And that is my point. Dr. Roop has allowed me to review certain data about the Confederation in advance of our departure, and I find some things both interesting and troubling. More than eighty percent of the member species evolved from herbivores. Almost none of the species eat primarily meat, and most of those that are omnivores eat mostly insects or other small, harmless creatures.”

“What are you telling me? That I should order a hamburger before I go?”

She sighed at my failure to understand her point. “Do you know what the symbol of the Confederation is? It's a gas giant, like Jupiter. Do you know why?”

I took a moment to consider what I knew about planets of that sort. “Maybe there's a gas giant in the outer solar system of every inhabited planet,” I proposed.

She squinted at me, maybe impressed, maybe suspicious. “How could you know that?”

“I'm into this stuff,” I said. “Gas giants are supposed to be a possible precondition for intelligent life. The gravity pulls big
stuff into the planet's orbit. If we didn't have Jupiter to protect us, the Earth would constantly be getting smashed by asteroids and comets, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.”

She nodded. “Correct, and their symbol is this thing that exists to protect them, not a thing they have done to protect themselves. They're passive. They're
sheep
.” Her voice grew quiet. “They are nice and orderly and calm and helpful, but they are not innovators or inventors like we are. All of their technology comes from these ancient aliens, these Formers, and they've been recycling their old technology for centuries. They have very little crime, and even less violent crime, not because they've solved those problems but because they never had them in the first place. I don't know why they asked us to apply—we're much more aggressive than most member species. So my point is that you are going to have to be on your best behavior. I'm less worried about your average intellect and lack of useful skills than I am about your adolescent rebelliousness. You need to keep it in check. No fighting, no troublemaking, no rule breaking.”

“I am not a troublemaker,” I said. I didn't want to tell her that I got picked on a lot, because that would sound pathetic.

“I don't care what you
were
,” she said. “I only care what you will be. Understand that I will do anything to make certain Earth is accepted into the Confederation, and if your behavior becomes a problem, then I will deal with it in ways you won't like.”

“I also respond well to positive reinforcement. I like Twizzlers, FYI.”

She stood up. “Tone down the sarcasm. I'm not sure how it translates. Now I need to speak to the rest of the delegation, so
go wander around the grounds or something until your mother arrives.”

She went inside the meeting room and closed the door. She paused, just a beat, and then locked it. Whatever she had to say to the other humans, it was not for me to hear.

•   •   •

They made my mother sign nondisclosure agreements with serious legal consequences for violation, but I couldn't imagine they would have actually prosecuted her for speaking up. Who was going to believe her if she claimed the government was in on a scheme to send her son to Hogwarts in space? The end result was that later that afternoon I was back in Ms. Price's office with Dr. Roop and now my mother, looking utterly astonished.

My mother wasn't skeptical about what they were saying. It's easy to believe in aliens when an actual alien is making the case. The Confederation's laws prevented my mother from getting the translation nanites, so Ms. Price and I had to tell her what Dr. Roop was saying. Mostly me. Ms. Price tended to type on her laptop when other people were speaking.