Escape from the Pipe Men! Read online

  Even with what had happened, I was excited to be going into the passage. Maybe we’d run into some new froms. Dad had met a lot of them and described them to me, and of course we had TV from lots of planets, but it wasn’t the same as seeing them in person. I followed Mom and Becky through the closet.

  The passage was just as I remembered it. It was wide enough for two people to walk together, and the places where the floor and ceiling met the walls were rounded rather than right angles. The ground was pinkish and soft, and instead of a wall in front of me, there was a rectangular black space. It was not quite static but moved a little, swirling ever so slightly with many varied shades of black. When I turned around, I could see the rectangular black door that we had come through, also swirling a little. Along both walls, there were other black doors, spaced maybe five feet apart. In between the doors, the walls were the same pinkish color as the ground. A soft, white light illuminated us, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  I could tell that Becky was excited to be here, too, because she had stopped crying and was standing with her mouth open. As far as I knew, she had never been in here since she was a baby.

  Mom started walking briskly, pulling Becky along. As we passed each of the black doorways, I couldn’t tell one apart from another. It was only a minute before I had completely lost track of which one led to our house. But Mom seemed to know exactly where she was going because a minute later, she abruptly stopped, cocked her head as if she was listening for something, and pulled Becky through a door.

  I hesitated for a few seconds, trying to mark the spot in my mind, but as I looked back, all I saw were the doors going on in both directions, all looking exactly the same.

  I came out into a different kind of hallway. Instead of the soft, fleshy floor of the passage, it had the same rubbery floor as our zoo sector. The ceiling was maybe twenty-five eyes up, tall enough to be over the head of the tallest Pipe Man. Little teapots hung limply from assistant wires suspended just under the ceiling.

  “Ryan, stay with me,” said Mom. She was standing with Becky in front of an open doorway.

  I hurried to catch up to them.

  The doorway was tall and thin like the Pipe Men. We would have to go through it one by one, sideways. Beyond that were rows of long, narrow tables, all empty.

  “Is that where the Pipe Men sleep?” asked Becky.

  “Only when they’re sick,” said Mom. She hesitated for a second.

  “Mom, are we supposed to be here?” I asked. I didn’t see anything human, and I was suddenly afraid. I had never seen a Pipe Man except from inside our sector. I had no idea what they’d do.

  “They told me he was back here,” said Mom. “Did they expect us to just wait and hope they know what to do with a sick human?”

  “What are we going to do, kidnap him?” I asked. “What would Earth doctors know about from poison anyway?”

  “I’m not going to kidnap him,” said Mom. “I just need to find out if they can help him.” Mom slid sideways through the door and into the room, still pulling Becky. At first, there was enough space to walk normally, but the passage between the tables gradually narrowed, so much that Mom had to slide sideways again. But she moved quickly. She was used to moving this way, since she worked all day in the Pipe Men soup kitchens.

  Becky was having a little more trouble. “Ow, Mom, not so fast!”

  I wasn’t used to this either, since I’d never been allowed into real Pipe Men spaces before, but I managed to follow them without bumping into the tables too many times. The room with the rows of empty tables went on for quite a while. Assistant wires ran all across the ceiling, ready to provide anything the Pipe Men needed. Here and there, strangely shaped instruments hung from the wires along with the soup pots. Finally, Mom reached another hallway and we were in front of another long, thin doorway.

  “Where does this go?” asked Becky.

  “To the from part of the hospital.” Mom’s voice sounded bitter, but I didn’t want to disturb her by asking about it. I just followed them through. We were now in a place that looked much like a human hospital. The room was bigger, with real beds laid out in rows, separated by curtains. It looked like some of the beds were filled, but I couldn’t see anything but blurry shapes behind the curtains.

  Several Pipe Men stood next to one of the curtains. All their eyes turned toward us.

  “How did they get in here?” one of them asked.

  “The parent must know the way.”

  “They must be sent back.”

  Two of the Pipe Men glided toward us. Both were tall, at least sixteen eyes each.

  “Earth family. You have heard about Os-car’s illness,” said one.

  “Where is it?” Mom asked. She meant Dad. The Pipe Men didn’t have words for male and female, husband or wife. She was shaking a little, but she looked right at the Pipe Man. “Is that it there?” She pointed at the curtain surrounding the nearest bed, where the other Pipe Men were still watching us.

  One of the Pipe Men back at the bed blinked only its top eye. I had never seen any of them do that before. The two Pipe Men with us turned around so that their eyes were facing away from us, and the Pipe Man by the bed blinked its top eye again. Then it blinked one a few eyes down, then other ones, quickly, one after the other. The two Pipe Men near us abruptly turned around again.

  “You will be allowed to see it,” one said. They separated from each other, leaving a space between them big enough for us to walk through in the normal way.

  Mom didn’t wait for any more instructions. She pulled Becky forward, and I followed them. The two Pipe Men fell in behind us, blocking the exit.

  I didn’t recognize any of the Pipe Men outside the curtain. That meant that if they’d ever been to see us, they weren’t regulars. I’d learned to recognize the ones I saw a lot, like Hon-tri-bum.

  The curtain opened as we came toward it, pulled along assistant wires, and I saw my dad lying on a bed. Above and around the bed were more assistant wires, much like the ones that were strung across the ceiling, only these were not parallel with each other but intertwined in a strange pattern. Two were connected to Dad, one in his jaw and the other in his stomach.

  Mom sobbed and ran toward him, brushing past the Pipe Men. “Oh, Oscar!” She turned back toward us. “What are you doing for it? What are these wires for?”

  The Pipe Men blinked at each other. Finally, the one nearest to Mom spoke.

  “We are keeping it alive.”

  Mom stood up and planted herself right in front of the Pipe Man who’d been speaking. “You can’t help it. I need to take it back to Earth.”

  “You cannot take it outside your home.”

  “I’ll tell them it was a snake bite. An Earth animal. Or I’ll tell them I just don’t know. Let them do what they can. You don’t know enough about us!”

  Several wires untwined themselves from the pattern above Dad’s bed and lowered themselves between Mom and the Pipe Man. They hung in front of her, taut, blocking her path back to Becky and me.

  “You will stay here,” said the Pipe Man. It turned all its eyes toward Becky and me.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Were they really going to make Mom stay here? I knew what our parents had taught us. When in doubt, do the ritual. I had already been holding on to Becky’s hand. Now I lifted both my hands up, and Becky followed. We bowed as low as we could go.

  “We will send a from to watch the children.” The Pipe Man turned to one of its fellows. “Take them back.” It blinked at another one of the Pipe Men, who floated away past the other silent curtains.

  Mom stood frozen behind the wires, tears flowing down her cheeks. Still looking at us, she grabbed one of Dad’s listless hands.

  “We’ll be okay, Mom,” I said. I tried not to let my voice show how fast my heart was beating. The Pipe Men had never done anything like this before. None of us had ever been really sick before, either. “You take care of Dad. We’ll be fine.”

 
; Becky moved like she was going to go to Mom, but I held her hand firmly. “We’re going back with this Pipe Man. Mom’s going to be fine. Dad needs her. Do you understand?”

  Becky was crying, but she nodded.

  The Pipe Man who had floated away floated back now. It carried some kind of device in its top-hole that looked like a thin, jagged rock. Light spilled out of the top of the device, giving the Pipe Man a little halo. Its fellow closed its top-hole and then, with a coughing sound, spit up a black pen-like instrument. It gripped the slimy stylus with its top-hole, then blinked at me.

  I bowed my head.

  “This way,” it said. It turned back the way we’d come and began to glide over the rubbery floor. The one with the strange device followed it.

  I glanced back at Mom. She was still standing rigid in front of the wires, gripping Dad’s hand, but she nodded at me. I tried not to look at Dad, but I couldn’t help it. He lay there looking an inch from death. I quickly turned back and followed the Pipe Men, gripping Becky’s hand.

  Four

  THE PIPE MAN WITH THE stylus tapped the other Pipe Man’s device. I couldn’t tell what that did, but after a few seconds, the Pipe Men silently began leading us down the passage. They stopped in front of one of the doors that looked the same as all the others.

  The one with the stylus peered at the device with its top eye. “Here,” it said.

  I faced them and nudged Becky. We raised our arms up, brought them sharply down, and backed through the door. With a slight buzz, we were back in Mom and Dad’s closet. The bedroom was eerily quiet, all the more so because I almost never came into this room.

  As soon as we got through the door, Becky bolted into the living room, plopped down on the couch, and started sobbing.

  I felt the same way, but I wasn’t going to let her see it. I sat down next to her. “Come on, he’s going to be fine. Look at what the Pipe Men can do. They have assistants, not just the wires but all sorts of other machines that Earth people don’t have. They have spaceships, and they can open up a door to our house even though they’re a gazillion miles away. They can take care of a little poison.”

  Becky went on crying, and I put my arms around her. None of us had been treated by a Pipe Man doctor since Becky was born. They had studied us, taken weird scans with some kind of alien machine. But what did they really know? They didn’t even understand arms and legs. I patted Becky on the back, then leaned over to the window behind us and pushed the curtain aside, just a little bit. It was still sunny outside, and with my eyes used to the dimness of O-thul-ba, it seemed too bright.

  A woman was walking by on the sidewalk. She saw me and stopped cold, staring. I quickly pulled the curtain shut, heart beating fast. She was the first human outside my family I’d seen in weeks.

  “What if they don’t let her come back?” Becky asked, still sobbing a little.

  “They’re going to let her. Once Dad gets well, they’ll both come back.” I hadn’t liked the way they’d acted toward her either. She was just trying to help Dad. What if they didn’t let her come back?

  “Why won’t they let him go to a doctor?”

  “It’s how they’re always worried about the Earth people knowing about them. Some Earth doctor might find the poison and guess it was caused by another from. That’s what they’re worried about.” That explanation didn’t quite make sense to me, though. No one else on Earth even knew other froms existed. They didn’t even have real spaceships. How would they guess?

  “But we go outside sometimes.”

  It was true, we did go outside sometimes. We’d even been to the doctor’s. But not often, and always with Mom or Dad. We were taught not to trust Earth people.

  “This is different,” I said. “We can’t take anything from other planets out there.”

  Just as I got finished talking, there was a rattling inside the living room closet, the one that led to our zoo sector. Something banged on the inside of the door. Becky sat frozen, shocked out of her sobs.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello?” said a voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “Ip. How do I get this thing open?”

  Ip. I tried to remember where I’d heard that name.

  “Your parent calls me a Horn-Puff,” said the voice. “Now, help me get out of here before I suffocate!”

  A Horn-Puff! In our house? I rushed over to the closet and pulled the door open. There he was, looking just the way Dad had described them. He was about twice the size of Dad, though not much taller, soft- looking and blobby. He was colored mostly a light green, with white blobs here and there that peeled like a skin rash. Only his skin was nothing like ours. It was dewy and shimmery, even in the dimness of the closet. Only the white patches were dry. He had pupil-less eyes like giant pomegranate rinds.

  “Ip!” I cried. “They let you come to our planet?”

  “Someone had to watch you children.” The Horn-Puff stepped out of the closet and into the living room, turning his blobby head on his nonexistent neck. “Interesting place you’ve got here. What’s over there?” Ip globbed his way over to the window behind the couch. He moved slowly, but surprisingly well for having very poorly defined legs. A single thick, woody white horn protruded from the middle of his back, ending in a sharp point that glimmered like the Horn-Puff’s skin. He pushed the curtain aside with a swipe of one blobby arm.

  “Oh . . .” Ip stood perfectly still, staring out.

  “You can’t do that!” I rushed over to him and pulled the curtain shut. Fortunately, it seemed like no one was out there anymore. “What if someone sees you?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t understand!” Becky had stopped crying and was glaring up at me accusingly.

  “I told him he can’t go around looking out people’s windows on other planets. No one’s supposed to know you exist!”

  “They won’t believe it. One time, a Hippt child went wandering right into Hdkowl, my planet. Everyone acted like it was a hgso!”

  “I don’t know what a Hippt or a hgso is, but you can’t count on Earth people being that stupid!”

  “Mfff,” said Ip. “You have anything to drink?”

  “We’re all out of insects,” I said.

  “Urg. Well, you children stay here. I’ll be right back after dinner.” With that, Ip blobbed his way across the room, stuffed himself back into the closet, and was gone.

  Becky was still glaring at me.

  “Come on,” I said, “you must have understood some of that.”

  “A little. I know he said he had to eat. I’m hungry too.”

  “We just had lunch.” I was hungry too, though, so I went with Becky into the kitchen. Unfortunately, the refrigerator was almost empty, and so were the cupboards. I sighed. I didn’t know when Mom was coming back, and the from who ate only one kind of insect wasn’t going to be much help. If Becky and I were going to eat, we were going to have to go to the store. I went over to the cookie jar where Mom kept her stash of Earth money.

  “Ryan! You can’t go out there!” Becky looked horrified.

  “What am I supposed to do, go back and ask the Pipe Men for some soup?”

  Becky wrinkled her nose.

  “Exactly! I’m going to have to go out there. And I’m not going to leave you alone here, so that means you’re coming, too.”

  I thought she was going to start crying again.

  “No,” I said, taking her shoulders. “It’s not going to be like last time. We’ll change our clothes. I’m sure we’ve got something that will pass.” I looked down at my shimmering black tunic that looked vaguely like a shiny potato sack and square-toed boots made from the skin of an O-thul-ban Id-won. I’d seen enough TV to know that this wasn’t what the other kids were wearing.

  Five

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Becky came out of her room wearing a gray dress. It came down a little below her knees, and the sleeves went barely past her elbows. It didn’t give her much shape.

  �
�Don’t you have any jeans?”

  “They’re too small.” She held up a tiny pair of jeans against her waist.

  I sighed. I had managed to squeeze into a pair of jeans, but they were way too short. At least I’d found a T-shirt that fit okay. Fortunately, Mom had recently brought home some Earth shoes for both of us. I didn’t know if they were in fashion, but at least we’d be able to make it to the store and back.

  I helped Becky put on her sneakers. With the thick boot socks she was wearing, they almost didn’t fit. But these were the socks we wore every day, and we didn’t have any others. At least my socks covered the part of my legs that the too-short pant legs didn’t. I helped her to her feet.

  “Ready?”

  Becky stared at the door and shook her head.

  “I know. Me neither.” I held her hand, turned the doorknob, and slowly pushed the door open. There was the front porch, then three steps leading down to a paved walkway through a patch of tidy grass, and at the end of that, a sidewalk. Beyond that was a street, empty except for a few parked cars. The sun was shining brightly down on all of it.

  I fumbled with the key in my hand, checking it in the lock to make sure it was the right one before I closed the door behind us. Becky was still gripping me hard, and she was shaking a little.

  “It’s going to be fine,” I said. “I’ve been to this store twice with Mom. It’s . . .” Where was it? I tried to act like I was just enjoying the sunshine instead of trying to figure out which way to go. “That way.” I started walking, pulling Becky along, all the way through the yard and to the sidewalk. I wanted to keep moving before either I lost my nerve or Becky started crying.

  “Hey!” a voice called.

  I didn’t look and kept walking.

  “Hey! Ryan!” My heart leapt. Who would know me? I heard footsteps behind me and realized I couldn’t avoid facing this.

  “You’re Ryan Hawthorn, right?” The kid had caught up to us, walking on the other side of Becky, on the small strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street.