Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (26 page)

It had taken a genius of mad science to make something with no electrical parts function as an AI. There was even a spring winding key in the little alcove where the automaton had been resting.

In every other respect, the creator’s genius had failed. It looked a little like a department store mannequin, and a lot like some horrible animatronic from a carnival booth. Its head and shoulders jittered as it talked, the colors on its metal-sculpted dress and face were due entirely to peeling paint, and the fake eyes didn’t focus on us at all. A nametag built into its left breast read ‘Miss Rattlebottom.’

The voice worked just fine, wobbling a bit but conveying plenty of emotion. Specifically, disapproval. “Remington Fawkes, you and your companions are out after curfew.”

Remmy bobbed her knees in what might have been the most perfunctory curtsey in the solar system. “Yes, Ma’am. We just arrived from Europa. My friends are foreigners who have never been here before. Could you assign us rooms?”

Miss Rattlebottom stood there for several seconds, clacking and, yes, rattling. The mannequin only went down to mid-thigh, where a post connected it to the rails it used to travel around. The post was the only part of the body that seemed able to stand still. The rest constantly twitched and generated a quiet but high speed clicking.

Finally, she said, “Security says you did come straight here. I forgive you for missing curfew this one time, Remington, but you are all dressed improperly, and will go to bed without supper. Do you understand?”

Remmy bowed her head. “Yes, Miss Rattlebottom.” She sounded apologetic, but she looked smug. The automaton obviously had no sense of smell. The aroma of Claire’s mother’s cooking would tell any human that we’d brought our own supper.

Miss Rattlebottom let out a loud sigh, her mouth opening and shutting as stiffly as a nutcracker’s. Clearly, we were well-loved but impossible children. “Proper attire will be made available in the morning. Names?”

Remmy pointed us out each in turn. “Bad Penny, Reviled, and E-Claire.”

“Dormitory M, rooms 60, 59, and 59. Room 58 is still assigned to you, Remington.”

Remmy brightened in what looked like honest delight. “We’re all together? Hey, thanks, Miss Rattlebottom!”

That apparently ended the conversation, because Remmy darted off down the nearest hallway, and we had to scurry to catch up. Once we had, Ray reached out an arm with theatric slowness to lay it across Claire’s shoulders and give her a leer. “It sounds like we’re sharing a room. I know―”

Remmy cut him off with a hiss and a swat at his arm. Claire was already giggling, but Remmy growled darkly. “Don’t even pretend. Not if you want to sleep in a bed tonight. House mothers have no sense of humor.”

Yet more hallways branched off this one at regular intervals. With the wooden wall paneling and recessed ceiling lights, the whole place looked like a hotel. One of those hallways had the letter M over it, and Remmy led us there.

Another automaton stood in an alcove by the doorway, but she didn’t move when we entered. Only two things differentiated this hallway from the one we’d come in. First, identical doors ran in perfectly even spacing down both walls. The numbers on the doors shattered Ray’s lascivious suggestion he and Claire would be roommates. Opposite doors on either side of the hall had the same numbers, starting at 1 near us and going down the line. Rooms on the right were for boys, and rooms on the left for the girls.

I knew that because of the other difference between this hall and the last. Kids! Dressed in the same awkward costumes as adults, they laughed and chatted all the way down the row, mostly loitering in doorways of what I guessed were their rooms. They all had a sameness to them that reminded me of the cookie cutter dockworkers. They were all thin and light-skinned, and nearly all of them had mouse brown hair.

Conversation didn’t entirely stop when we appeared, but it certainly slowed down. That I understood. The peculiar ritual I noticed was half a dozen kids, four boys and two girls, disappearing into their rooms and then returning with leather and brass goggles. They either hung the goggles around their necks like collars, or strapped them up on their foreheads. All of the kids with goggles watched us more intently than any of the others. Claire got the most stares from regular kids, but the ones with the goggles ignored Ray and Claire entirely. They had eyes only for me.

I took my own goggles off my forehead, twirled them around by my finger, and then hung them around my neck. Eyes narrowed, accompanied by smiles.

The first person to say anything to us was a boy, who said with a sneer, “Why, Master Remington is back, and he brought friends.”

Remmy’s face set in fury, but she didn’t respond.

Only that one boy seemed actively unfriendly, and an especially pale, goggle-wearing girl squeaked with excitement as she darted out of her bedroom to meet us. “Remmy, who are they? More Jets?”

“Jets don’t dress like that,” a boy a couple of doors down contradicted her.

“Oh, we’re from Earth,” Claire demurred, her tone and smile as light and casual as if she didn’t know she was setting off a conversational nuclear bomb.

“Really from Earth?”

“Remington’s friends are bigger liars than he is.”

“Is it true, Remmy?”

“Are there more of you? Is there going to be a new wave of immigration?”

“How did you get past the Puppeteers?”

The mob trailed behind us like a comet’s tail, until at the very end of the hall we found our rooms. 59 and 59 on opposite sides, Ray and Claire’s. Remmy opened the wooden door to look room 58 on the girl’s side over, and didn’t seem pleased by the view. There was only one room 60. I’d actually gotten the room at the very end of the hall.

I opened the door to room 60, and the crowd around us pushed me, Ray, and Claire into it. I took in as much as I could in the confusion. Wood paneled walls, narrow bed, empty shelves, dresser and chest at the foot of the bed. A hatch on the wall labeled ‘laundry.’

I sat on the bed, and Ray and Claire joined me on either side. Ray unfastened the string tying his duffel bag together, and handed me a plastic-wrapped hamburger and a cardboard box of spicy fried potato wedges. Claire got a casserole―and there could be anything in a Misty Lutra casserole―and Ray served himself an entire beef roast and a bag of carrots.

The crowding kids had managed to stop themselves at the doorway, but the boy in front sniffed the air. “That… smells… good.”

The girl next to him took a deeper breath than I’d have believed her corset allowed. “I’ve never smelled anything like it.” From her awed tone, she meant that.

Why not? We wouldn’t be here long, and Red Herring’s food stocks would keep refilling by whatever secret method Spider had arranged. I reached into the bag and pulled out a platter of orange chicken on rice and another of fried noodles with shrimp. I held them out, and kids crept into the room so the boy could take the orange chicken, and the girl the fried noodles.

Ray didn’t even pause in wolfing down his roast beef, just held out a fistful of forks.

The boy scooped up a bite, and the girl the same. They both had goggles on their foreheads, I noticed. When they made ‘mmm’ noises of satisfaction, more kids behind them grabbed forks and took bites. The platters disappeared into the crowd, passed back so the lucky kids could try Claire’s Mom’s cooking before they ran out.

Ray, a sweetheart even if a lecherous one, passed over a pan of grilled salmon and a nacho bowl. Okay, those had to be Miss Lutra’s cooking. Nobody else made a big bowl of salsa with beans and fruit in it and stuck it like a pincushion with chips.

“Is that Earth food?” the girl in front asked me.

“Are those Earth clothes?” the boy asked Claire. He had rather a Rayish grin. These people were way too excited about twelve inches of Claire’s calves.

From the ceiling, an echoing voice announced, “Lights Out in five minutes!” It held that hint of wobble Miss Rattlebottom’s voice had, and maybe the words weren’t emphasized quite right.

Sixty kids groaned in unison. Well, a lot of kids. Sixty rooms didn’t mean sixty kids, and come to think of it, that would be one hundred nineteen kids, including us.

Remmy joined in the universal groaning. She’d just shoved her way through the crowd to join us, and now joined the reluctant exodus. Everybody shuffled back to their rooms, but with so many in the way, it took her nearly half a minute to reach the door.

Ray used the time to pass her a submarine sandwich, a pair of scotch eggs, and a twenty-four ounce bottle of cola.

Her chest puffed out at that, and she gave a jerk of her head, looking at Claire and Ray in turn. “You two better get going. You do not want to be late for Lights Out.”

Hands full of food, Ray and Claire shrugged and followed the crowd, presumably to their own rooms. Remmy shut the door behind them.

I finished my french fries seconds before Lights Out. Remmy had been right, they were serious. With no further announcement, the light in my room switched off. The room went pitch black.

Fine by me. I was tired. I dumped my food wrappings in the wastebasket, wriggled out of my jumpsuit, and plopped back on a pleasantly springy mattress. What a wonderful change from the Red Herring’s creepy Puppeteer coffins.

I fell asleep.

he room wasn’t quite as black as I’d thought. The feeblest amount of light leaked around the edges of the door. Large objects made lighter shapes against a deeply shadowed background, but that was better than being completely blind.

One of those shapes leaned against the wall, his long rabbit ears waggling. He held one hand up to his face, like he was smoking a cigarette. I caught up with his words in mid-sentence. “―not like me, after all. Juliet, you’ll have to warn―”

I sat up.

Harvey was gone. Had that been Harvey? I’d heard the same man’s voice from the Red Panacea Clinic’s PA. He still sounded worried.

…hadn’t he?

I couldn’t remember clearly. It was like a dream.

I looked around the dark room, with its bare shelves and no sign of a man with rabbit ears. It wasn’t like a dream―it
was
a dream. It had felt like a dream, and now, I felt awake.

Awake, but still tired. I put my head back on the feather pillow and zonked out. My last coherent thought was that it would be nice to get back to my own bed. This vacation in space had been just what I needed.