The Boy from Earth (4 page)

“You mean it cleans carpets?” I joke.

“No,” says Butterbean seriously.

I clap my hands twice, and step into the circle.

For a couple of heartbeats, nothing happens. Mad Guy frowns. “It must be the effects of the despacer on you,” he says. “Your particles are closer together than normal, and the transporter is having to work harder….”

He disappears. I lose my stomach, lose it again, and walk out into the gym, feeling lousy.

It doesn't look like a gym, though. More like a messy attic or storeroom. My head reaches fairly close to the ceiling (I can hardly wait to get outside. I'm sick of crouching all the time.) so I get a bird's-eye view of it all. Even for a messy attic, this is a lot of mess. Piles of stuff in corners. Mounds of stuff on top of other mounds of stuff. Frozen waterfalls of stuff cascading from shelves onto the floor, covering it completely.

By stuff I mean, well, stuff. Different kinds of stuff. I don't know what any of it is, or does. It looks like you could wear some of the stuff, play with some, eat some, take some to school, and send some to your grandma. Some of it is pointy, like cactus needles or dentist drills. Some of it is soft, like bedding or pudding. Some of it appears to be
moving. It's all covered in fine bluish dust. The dust hangs in the air, tickling my throat.

“Hello!” I call, and immediately have to cough.

I bet I'm in the wrong place. I don't see a door. The only way out is the transporter I came in by.

“Norbert?” I say quietly.

“Go away!”

Not Norbert, whose voice is shrill and vibrant. This is a dust-dry voice, wheezing, crackling, grumpy. It comes from a pile of stuff that might be a desk.

“Excuse me,” I say.

Looking closer, I can see a pair of feelers poking out of one of the piles of stuff. They twitch, then there's a small explosion, scattering stuff and dust, and a small head pops out, attached to the feelers.

Two eyes climb up their stalks to glare at me.

“Can't you hear? I said go away! And don't take anything with you!”

“I'm looking for the gym,” I say. I'm not worried – the creature with the bad temper is the size of my hand. It seems to be some sort of crustacean. A crusty one. I think I ate something like it one night at Red Lobster.

“So?” it says.

“Do you know where the gym is?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Will you tell me?”

“No. Now, go away!”

I see something I recognize among all the stuff on the floor. I bend down. “Hey, how'd you get this?” I say, pulling it free with difficulty

“A giant's bathrobe. Came in fourteen months ago. It's on file.”

“It looks like mine.” Made of black terry cloth, with a pair of pilot's wings stitched onto the bulging hip pocket. (My aunt works for an airline.) I wore it when I was the third wise man in our class Christmas play in grade 4. “In fact,” I say, reaching into the pocket and finding a Kleenex package, “this
is
my old bathrobe.”

I've always kept Kleenex in my pocket. Drives my mom crazy because she washes the robe, and the Kleenex explodes in the dryer. This is a fresh packet of Kleenex, and mine usually isn't, and this pocket isn't ripped down the side, and mine is, but it's my robe.

“Hey, and that's mine too! Wow!” I put down the robe and pick up a slipper. Corduroy, with a red tartan pattern and slippery soles. My favorite slippers ever. From a standing start, I could slide halfway across the living-room carpet in these.

“Yes,” says the creature. “Flying slippers. They've been here for ages. They're on file too. Everything's on file.”

“Flying slippers?”
That's what I used to call them. It all comes back with a rush. Once I slid over the edge of the upstairs landing and flew – well, fell – down the steps to the front hall. I never managed the trick again, but I kept trying until I outgrew the slippers. My flying
slippers. “I think I'm supposed to take these,” I say.

“
Take
them? Take them
away?”

I hunt for the other one. I wonder if I can wear them. My feet have grown a lot since my sliding carpet days. Mind you, the slipper looks bigger than I remember.

“Put it down,” says the creature sharply. With a speed I would not have suspected, it scrabbles out from beneath its blanket of stuff and scurries over to me, waving its pincer claws menacingly. It's some sort of crab, I guess. It moves sideways.

“Drop the slipper! Drop it now!”

“But Mad Guy said I would need it,” I say. I find another slipper and pull it out. Yes, it matches.

“Drop them! Drop the slippers!”

You'd think I was a puppy.

This crab has two claws. The larger one holds a pencil. I hesitate, and lose. In a flash of silver lightning, the pencil jabs into my hand.

“Hey!” I cry out. “Careful, there.”

“My name is Jim!” he cries. “I am The Jim – the only one. I am in charge here. And no one takes anything from me. They come here all the time, with their order forms and their requisitions, with their dollies and their carts. They try to take things, but I do not let them. ‘This is a storeroom,’ I tell them. ‘If you take things away, it will not be a storeroom any longer. It will be a store.’ They go away with long faces, and I laugh at them. Like this: ha-ha-ha. I control the room. I am the room! I am The Jim! Now,”
stabbing me again, “drop the slippers! Drop the robe! Never never
never
take anything from The Jim!”

I stand up. The Jim grabs onto a slipper with his free claw. I lift him too.

–
Oh, there you are, Dingwall.

I turn around. Norbert is stepping out of the transporter circle, dragging two knapsacks behind him. –
I see you've met The Jim
, he says.

“Yes. I found flying slippers, but he doesn't want me to take them away.” The little fellow is dangling from the slipper in my hand. He twists and contorts his body around, trying to stab me with the pencil in his larger claw.

–
Jim, is in charge of the storeroom here.

“He takes his responsibilities very seriously,” I say. “Put them down! Put them down! Put them down!” says Jim. “Put everything down!” “Can you help, Norbert?” I say.

–
How? You look like you have everything under control
.

“Mad Guy wants to see us in the map room,” I say.

–
Yes, he told me too. I'll meet you there, and then we can get going. Clap four times before getting into the transporter.

“Hey, wait!” I say.

–
Oh, and bring this knapsack, will you, Dingwall? I'm a prince, not a porter. Yours is the big one.
He claps four times, steps backward into the circle on the floor, and vanishes.

Jim succeeds in wriggling himself into the slipper. He's now close enough to stab me with pencil again. “Drop it!” he says. Stab. Stab. Ouch.

This is ridiculous. I'm holding a pair of slippers with a crazy crustacean attached. I can't pull him off the slipper, but I wonder if I can distract him. I look around. I reach down to the floor and pick up the first shiny thing I can find. A silver tube – looks like toothpaste. “Hey, I can use this,” I say loudly. “I think I'll take this … um … thing away with me.”

“No! No!”

“I think I'll carry it away, and never bring it back,” I say. “It's nice and squishy and fits in my hand.” I hold the tube near the slippers and jiggle it, so the metal glints in the light. I feel like I'm fishing.

Jim takes the bait. “No-o-o!” he cries. He leaps from the slipper to the tube, and clamps one of his pincer claws around it.

“Drop it!” he says. “Drop it now.”

The tube breaks, releasing a familiar odor. Not toothpaste.

I don't make model airplanes myself, but I have an acquaintance who does. The fumes from the glue make you giggle and fall down and throw up, he says. I've never even got to the giggling stage, and I don't want to. I throw the tube, and Jim, into the far corner of the storeroom.

“Ha-ha-ha!” he cries in midair.

I move fast now, pulling off my space boots and putting on the red tartan slippers. They fit perfectly, as if they were custom-made Earth-size 9. How strange is that?

I shoulder the knapsack and clap four times. On an impulse, I grab my old bathrobe before stepping into the
transport circle. I don't know why. There may be an association between the third wise man and the glue smell. (“Myrrh is mine, the bitter perfume.”)

I hear Jim laughing like a fiend. Then I'm gone.

“So, why do they call it the map room?” I ask.

“Why? Because of the maps!” exclaims Butterbean. “Haven't you noticed? Every wall is covered with them. This topographical map in front of us takes up the whole wall, and shows every feature of this part of the planet in … oh.” He stops when he notices my smile. “You were making a joke.”

Mad Guy and Norbert are both smiling too.

“Well, maybe a little one,” I say.

It's a good-looking room, long and low, with smooth wood floors and hanging light fixtures that I am in danger of bumping into. The maps on the walls are the old-fashioned kind, with clouds puffing their cheeks in the corners, and dragons curled in the empty spaces.

Mad Guy is using a pointer on the big map marked
TOPOGRAPHY OF JUPITER
. “We've surveyed the whole hemisphere from Betunkaville to the sea, looking for the Lost Schloss,” he says. “That includes the
FRONTAL FOREST
, here, the
HIPPO CAMPGROUNDS
, and this great area drained by the
PARIETAL RIVER
. We've flown over all the
RANDOM LANDS
. Nothing.”

“What about the report from that fishing lodge a few years back?” says Butterbean, squinting at the big map through his glasses.

“You mean the guy who fell in the water? He was drunk. You can't trust those Parietal fishers, Butterbean. Not after sunset.”

I'm wearing my slippers and bathrobe and knapsack. I spread my hands. “So where do I look for the Lost Schloss?”

Mad Guy steps away from the map. “When I found out that you were coming to fulfill the great prophecy, I went over the rhyme again. How does it describe the location of the Lost Schloss?”

I can't remember, but the other two can. They say the line together:
“In plain sight, and yet none can see.”

“But that could mean anything,” I say.

“What if the words
in plain sight
were literal, son?” Mad Guy says.

“You mean, it's on some plain?” I say. “Is there a plain on Jupiter?”

Mad Guy whacks the map with his pointer. There, on
the upper right corner,
*
is a great open area called
PLAINS OF ICH
.

Norbert stares up at me. I shrug.

Mad Guy points to the left-hand edge of the map, about in the middle. “Here's
BETUNKAVILLE
, where we are now. If you move towards the center of the map, you'll find something called
BOGWAY FEN
. See the frog on the lily pad? Good. On the other side of the FEN, you can pick up the
PARIETAL RIVER
as it snakes down through the
RANDOM LANDS
. Follow that river to the falls by the
AMYG DALE
here, and turn up. Now, what do you see?” He taps the pointer at a group of peaks that seem to be wreathed in fog.
SUDDEN MOUNTAINS
says the label. “Does that remind you of anything now?”

“Past bog and sudden mountainside,” I say excitedly. The next line of the prophecy. Mad Guy beams all over his shaggy head, teetering down to the ground and then tottering up on his rounded bottom. He looks like a garden gnome.

Norbert is gazing dreamily at the bottom left corner of the map.
SHELDONBURG
.

–
That's Nerissa's hometown
, he sighs.

“I still don't see why we can't take your spaceship,” I say. Norbert is zipping up his knapsack. Mad Guy and Butterbean are gone. We'll be leaving in a few minutes.

–
You don't know much about space travel, Dingwall. Sure, the ship would get there in a jiffy, and then what? There's no tractor beam to pull us down. Before we know it, we 're over the next country.

“You landed the spaceship in my nose!” I object. “You're saying you can't land it in the middle of a great plain?”

–
No offence, Dingwall, but your sense of scale is way off. You're used to the size of things on Earth. Here on Jupiter, every thing is smaller. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for the despacer.

“Are you saying my nose is big?”

Weird, I'm all, like, outraged. I wonder why. What's wrong with a big nose? Miranda has the greatest nose, high-bridged and narrow, like a knife blade, but she's sensitive about it. I told her once that I liked her nose, and she whacked me on the side of the head.

–
Big? I'm saying your nose is the size of a football field
.

Ridiculous.

–
And remember, Dingwall. The castle is hidden. It's called Lost Schloss for a reason. We have a better chance of finding it from close range
.

“You say there's food in these packs for a week. What if it takes us longer than a week?”

–
Then we're out of food. I'm not coming back until we're successful.
His eyes narrow, showing how determined he is.

It's a good line. I'm trying to think of something more classy than “Uh-huh,” or “Sure,” or “Me neither,” when I hear the brass fanfare.

Norbert jumps in the air. –
Queen Betunka!

“Your mom,” I say.

The map room is at the end of a long hall. The double doors at the end of the hall open together. The fanfare sounds again.

Norbert pulls a string at the bottom of the big topographical map, which rolls into itself and disappears into the ceiling. Behind it is a window. First one I've seen on Jupiter. It has frosted glass, so I can't see what's on the other side. Whatever it is seems bright enough.

–
Come on, Dingwall. Let's get out of here
.

“Shouldn't we take a map?”

–
No time.
He struggles with the sash.

“But what about your mom?”

–
I can't stand her good-byes. She'll kiss me, and then she'll yell at me. Then she'll do them both together.
He shudders.

I know how he feels. My mom wears two faces too. Sometimes she loves me so much it hurts; other times … well, she doesn't.

The crowd noise starts to spill into the map room from the hall outside. I hear the queen's voice clearly.

“NOR-BERT! Where are you? I'm sending out invitations to the party tonight. Cecile's daughter is looking
forward to seeing you again. Mad Guy, you said they were in the map room!”

Norbert succeeds in pulling up the sash. A gust of wind blows through the narrow opening and, with it, a gust of brightness. Norbert hoicks one leg over the windowsill.

–
Come on, Dingwall
, he whispers.

Is he really going to run away from his mom? I've never done that. Mind you, I've wanted to. I look back over my shoulder. The crowd is surging down the long hall.

Norbert leaps out the window, pulling me after him.

For a second, I'm blinded by the daylight. I have to squint to see. And what I see is a sheer cliff face flashing past me. I'm in midair, plummeting to my doom.