Young Adventurers Page 21

Her classmates settled down and listened, as if they had secretly thought about this question. Both of Emto’s jaws hung slack for a moment before he answered. “There is a difference between bravery and recklessness. Of course, an individual Lemp can act bravely for a time. But the need to feel safe is built into our brains. Think of it as a good thing. We have a strong wish to stay alive.” He indicated the frib model. “What would you expect this creature to do if a jagged-fanged metzon bird tried to catch it?”

  “It would get scared.”

  “It would fly away.”

  “That’s right,” their teacher said. He grabbed the fake frib’s synthetic wings and flapped them. “That’s its natural survival sense. That’s what we Lemps have, too: the instinct to avoid danger.”

  “I have an instinct to fall asleep,” a boy named Mepro whispered double-voiced from the back of the room. Raising his wide, round feet in front of him, he pretended to snore through his upper mouth.

  When the students stopped giggling, Emto sighed. “I know looking at models in the classroom is not very interesting. Next week we’ll take a field trip to the Reppin Meadows.”

  “To see the diamond bugs?” Toori asked excitedly. When a bunch of kids turned to her, she explained. “My moms took me to see them last year. It’s so fun. The whole field sparkles.”

  “Well, good,” said Emto. “You can give us pointers when we’re there.” With two smiles he added, “And maybe you’ll even discover something you didn’t know.”

  Toori hopped and skipped all the way home. It wasn’t just the diamond bugs field trip that had her energized. As she expected, Mimi was waiting in front of their dwelling, leaning out of a private transport pod. “Ready for the test run?” she called.

  “I am ready!” Toori squealed.

  Mama stepped out from behind the big red pod. “And you’re sure it’s safe?”

  Toori could tell by the way Mimi rolled her center eye that Mama had already asked that a hundred times.

  “It’s safe, it’s safe!” Toori giggled. “And we’re even staying pretty near the ground, right, Mimi?”

  “Yup. We’ll stay just inside Orpa’s atmosphere.”

  “Which means you can stay in contact.” Mama emphasized the word with her louder, lower mouth. “Constant contact.”

  Mimi gave Mama a four-armed hug. “Except for a short time. We have to practice being off comms.”

  “That will feel like forever,” Mama admitted.

  “Just keep busy,” Toori advised. “You’re so amazing at planning things. Work on organizing the trip. The time will fly by.”

  Mimi burst out laughing. “You assume there’s a single micro-detail she hasn’t already planned.”

  Toori’s slick skin rippled with excitement as she climbed onto the ship. “Why did you name it The Reach?” she asked Mimi. “Is it because we’re reaching out into space?” As Mimi helped Toori strap herself in, Toori could tell she was stalling. “What are we reaching for?” she prodded.

  “Ourselves.” Mimi’s answer came out in two strident voices. Abruptly she turned away and hunched over the controls.

  The engine buzzed to life, but Toori couldn’t think about the takeoff until she had a proper answer. “What do you mean, reaching for ourselves?” She patted her chest with her upper fingers and her belly with her lower fingers. “We’re right here, aren’t we?”

  Mimi just smiled and turned back to her work.

  Once The Reach left Orpa’s surface, Toori’s mind drifted from the conversation. She’d been on smaller air ships many times—Mimi was an aeronautics engineer, after all—but riding in this giant vessel was a whole new thrill. She gasped as the lavender clouds swallowed them up. “This is amazing!” she called out. “Why does everyone think we’re going to be too scared to do this mission?”

  Noticing how busy Mimi was at the controls, Toori didn’t worry that she wasn’t answering. The Reach rose higher.

  A serious voice came through the intercom. “Reach, come in.”

  “Reach here,” replied Mimi.

  “All systems online?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Attaining orbital velocity?”

  “Nearly there.” Mimi paused, peering at the digital numbers blurring past on a monitor. “Aaand…orbital velocity attained.”

  The Reach pulled upward, challenging Orpa’s gravity. Out the windows Toori watched swirls of purple and gray clouds drop away like fragments of spun sugar. She pictured the openness of space and swallowed down a lump of fear. “I can’t wait to see Raya City from up there,” she said, determined to stay more curious than scared.

  Mimi and the command center talked back and forth. They never said anything interesting, but the sound of contact with life on the ground gave solace like a warm blanket. Toori had almost been lulled to sleep when a surprising sentence jolted her awake.

  “Leaving comms range,” said the voice on the intercom. “Are you sure about this, Reach?”

  Even scarier was how Mimi didn’t answer right away. Toori could see her mother’s flesh vibrate.

  “Um…I…” Mimi stammered.

  A battle started up inside Toori’s brain. Part of her was thrilled. She ached to find out what it was like to cut the tether with Orpa. But the part that was curious quickly got swallowed up. “Mimi! I’m scared! I want to go home!”

  Mimi turned around, all three of her eyes yellow with panic. “Okay, yeah. We should go back down,” she said through clenched upper teeth. At the same time, her lower mouth spoke into the communicator: “Reach returning to base.”

  “Good idea,” said ground control. He sounded relieved, too.

  “Oh, thank you, Mimi,” Toori whimpered. Her relief almost drowned out that little voice in her head, but it still insisted, “Keep going. Find something new.”

  The ride back to the air base was awkwardly silent. They didn’t even look at each other the whole way back. The closer they came to the surface of Orpa, the worse Toori felt. By the time they landed, she hated herself and the entire Lemp species.

  Mama ran toward them when they disembarked. She wrapped her arms around the two of them and wailed. Toori let the hug go on too long.

  “Oh, sweethearts,” Mama gushed, “I’m so glad you turned around.” She pulled Mimi closer and whispered, although Toori could still hear. “Let’s just cancel the whole trip. I’m sure there’s some other family who could go. Why do we have to be the ones who experiment?”

  When Mama bent forward, Mimi pressed the top of her head to Mama’s. “Maybe you’re right,” Mimi whispered in a shaky voice.

  “No!” Suddenly the brave voice in Toori’s head wasn’t so quiet. It grew to boiling, making her shout out its rage. “No! What’s wrong with us? We both were dying to leave comms range. But as soon as we were about to, we lost our nerve.”

  “What could we do?” Mimi asked. “It’s who we are.”

  Toori felt betrayed. “You’ve been working on this since I was little. But you always knew it wouldn’t work?!”

  “Because we become afraid,” Mama finished for her. “According to our nature.”

  “Then what’s the point of even trying anything?” Toori sobbed. She wanted to run away, but the cocoon Mama and Mimi had formed around her was too comforting.

  “Come on, my explorer,” Mimi said in two voices, as if a nickname could lift the mood. “Let’s go home.”

  For the next few days, Toori’s spirit drooped. Mama made her favorite foods, Mimi sang her favorite songs. Still she moped, wondering if it was worth doing anything, knowing she’d always get too scared to finish.

  The school days dragged on and nothing interested her.

  “Well, this day should improve your mood,” Mama said much too brightly one morning.

  “Why?” Toori asked, poking at her breakfast pudding.

  “Well, for one thing, Mimi’s at the spaceport, planning modifications for The Reach.”

  Toori’s anger flared. “Why bother?” She shoved her
bowl away.

  Mama wrapped her many flat fingers around Toori’s arm. “Just because we have this…this thing in our nature—” she tapped her head— “it doesn’t mean we should give up. We have to keep pushing, finding out what we’re capable of.”

  Toori pictured the spaceship Mimi had designed. “The Reach,” she whispered, finally understanding its name. Feeling a little more hopeful, she stood up. “I’d better go to school.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. Enjoy your field trip.”

  “My what?”

  “To see the diamond bugs.”

  “Oh, hey!” Toori had completely forgotten. “Maybe this will be a nice day!”

  When her class transpod reached the Reppin Meadows, the ground already sparkled here and there. The students tossed out crumbled, dried millasti bark, the diamond bugs’ favorite food. Soon the meadow glowed like the sky on a cloudless night.

  Mepro, the troublemaker, raised two arms. “Teacher?”

  Emto called on him with a nervous squint. “What’s your question, Mepro?”

  “Teacher, where do the diamond bugs live? They don’t hang out in the grass all day, right? Do they have apartments, or what?”

  Most of the other kids laughed, but Toori could tell Emto wanted to take the question seriously. “Follow me,” he said with a mysterious air, “and I’ll show you.” He addressed Toori, who walked next to him across the field. “I’ll bet you didn’t know about this when you were here before.” Emto paused to point at a tree.

  Bursting with curiosity, Toori peered into a knot in the trunk.

  “Tell the class what you see,” Emto instructed her.

  But she couldn’t speak. She was completely mesmerized by the hundreds—maybe thousands—of gleaming diamond bugs filling the tree.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Emto laughed with his upper mouth while saying with his lower, “They never stop shining. No matter what. And the shells are unbreakable. Scientists have tried crushing them, burning them, dissolving them. But they can’t be destroyed or dimmed.”

  “What makes them shiny?” asked another girl peeking into the tree.

  “No one knows.”

  “Ha. You’re the teacher,” cracked Mepro. “You’re supposed to know stuff we ask about. You’re gonna get fired.” Toori wished he’d be quiet, but he pushed his way through to the front of the line and said more idiotic things while he looked at the bugs. “We could catch ‘em, use ‘em for decorations. Cool live crawling jewelry!” He reached one hand into the crevice.

  Emto rushed toward him. “Mepro, I don’t think you’d better…”

  Before Emto could finish, Mepro’s chest and face were covered in diamond bugs. “Agh! Get them off me!” He scurried backward, swatting at himself with all four arms. Toori and a few other kids tried to help, but he moved so violently they couldn’t get near him.

  “Try to calm down and stay still,” Emto urged.

  Instead, Mepro took off across the field, flailing and screaming. Most of the diamond bugs had jumped off, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’ll go see if he’s all right,” Emto said grimly. “you guys stay here. And don’t touch those shells.”

  “Nobody has to tell me twice,” cracked Toori’s friend Nere. The kids huddled together nervously. “Hey, Toori? Toori?”

  Toori became aware of Nere calling her name and everybody staring at her. “Yeah?”

  “You zoned out,” Nere informed her. “You didn’t get bitten, did you?”

  Toori shook herself to wake up. “No, no. I was just…thinking.” The thought she’d been mulling was vague, but it fascinated her. It was just an image at this point: thousands and thousands of diamond bug shells twinkling in the sky. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but the vision made her feel safe.

  “Hey, dreamer!” Nere poked her with a large toe. “We’re leaving. Emto has to take big dummy Mepro to the Health Center.” She curled up her upper set of lips. “He’s got gross bites all over.”

  Nodding numbly, saying something sympathetic, Toori followed Nere across the field toward the transpod. She could not erase the image of glittering diamond bugs splashed across the night sky.

  Dinner was tense.

  “I’m just not sure this is a good idea after all,” Mama admitted, swishing her double straw through the soup. “Maybe we should just stay home.”

  “We’ve been over this and over this,” Mimi growled. Toori squirmed in her seat, trying to block out her mothers’ arguing. Pinching her straw between her upper teeth, Mimi added with her lower mouth, “It’s my job to keep trying. Would you prefer I leave the atmosphere and go out of comms range by myself?”

  “How dare you even joke about that.”

  “I’m not joking.” Mimi pushed her soup away. “We have to learn about space and space travel somehow. So we have to try this.”

  “No. Someone has to try,” Mama objected. “It doesn’t have to be you. Why does it even have to be a Lemp at all? Why not listen to our nature and stay safe?”

  Toori couldn’t take any more. “Just stop it!” She wailed with both voices, “Either go or don’t go, but stop fighting!” She hurried to her corner of the dwelling, lay down, and rolled toward the wall. Hearing Mimi approach, she grumbled, “I’m fine. Leave me alone, please.”

  Toori pressed two hands against her central eye and squeezed her outer eyes shut. It was a trick she’d figured out when she was little to make her imagination more vivid and help her organize her thoughts. As sadness made her sleepy, Toori’s head filled with a surreal dream.

  She saw Mimi and Mama, flying through the blackness of space in The Reach. She was there, too, opening a tiny door in the back of the ship. Through this opening she tossed handful after handful of diamond bugs. Catching the light of nearby stars and the sun, the multifaceted shells gleamed brightly. The bugs scurried across the vacuum as if it were a field. With all of space illuminated, the stars seemed to fade and the planet Orpa came clearly into view. Even the clouds around it burned up in the diamond bugs’ fiery glow. And Toori, leaning out of The Reach, could see everyone on Orpa looking up and waving. Every Lemp, every giant Ganst, even the eyeless little Tegros knew where she was.

  After this happy, reassuring dream, Toori woke with a burst of energy, sure she’d found a way to solve their conundrum. It was the middle of the night. Mama and Mimi lay sprawled on their pallet in the far corner. “I’ll have to pass them to get to the door,” Toori calculated as she stood in the purplish darkness. Their big round feet made Lemps very stable when they stood, but made creeping quite a challenge.

  Toori grabbed a large satchel and clutched it in her two right arms. She splayed her fingers on the wall, letting the surface guide and steady her in the dark. Although she stepped as quietly as she could, at one point both her moms snorted and rolled over. Panicked, Toori stayed absolutely still until she heard Mama’s rhythmic breathing and the soft sleep-whistle from Mimi’s lower mouth. Then, giving up caution for speed, she rushed out of their dwelling.

  The night stretched out huge and silent. Toori felt smaller than a diamond bug, hugging her satchel and trying to remember what she was doing outside at that hour. The big idea from her dream was fading. Pressing on her central eye, Toori tried to refocus her goal. “Collect diamond bugs,” she told herself. “Use them to light our way through space.” But how? She didn’t know, but she still felt compelled to go to that field.

  Knowing the transpods ran all night, she trotted to the nearest station and waited. She’d been on the pods too many times to be afraid. At Center station she changed to a pod running west out of the city. It didn’t take long before the computer voice announced the Reppin Meadows stop.

  Toori stepped off the pod and peered toward the meadow. It seemed to roll off the edges of the Allera Hills rising blacker than black beyond it. Countless lights pricked the dark ground.

  “There you are,” said Toori, opening the top of her satchel and setting one giant foot onto the diamond bugs’ terr
itory. During her daytime visits she hadn’t been able to tell just how many bugs there were. “Millions,” she gasped, watching the field pulse with more points of light than there were stars in all the universe.

  Looking down, she warned, “I don’t want to step on you.”

  The bugs must have sensed her foot coming toward them, since dozens of tiny lights hurried out of the way.

  “You’re smart, aren’t you?” Toori laughed. It became a game, watching the bugs hustle away to make room for her foot, step after step. When she did a few twirls, the bugs moved in a big shiny spiral around her. “Is this what it feels like to be the center of the galaxy?” she called out, spinning joyously. It seemed that the stars spun too, mirroring the field of sparkly shells.

  Toori danced. The diamond bugs danced. The stars danced. It was a glorious, glamorous ball. But suddenly Toori’s mood sank and she stopped twirling. “I can’t capture you,” she told the jittery white polka dots around her feet. “What am I doing? You’re living things. You’d die if I tossed you out into space.”

  Her dream seemed more and more ridiculous. “And how did I plan to toss you out? We have to keep the spaceship sealed up, or we’ll die!” Toori sat down hard on the scrubby ground, sending the bugs dashing out of harm’s way. “And what did I think you would do out there in space? Just float around randomly until the end of time?” She grasped at the dirt with all four sets of fingers. “It was just a silly dream.”

  She looked around desperately at the bugs backing away from her frantic energy. All but one. A single diamond bug shone all alone near Toori’s lower left hand. She leaned over it, concerned. “What’s wrong with you, little guy? Go play with your friends.”

  The bug started to limp away. “No, wait!” Toori begged. “Maybe I can help you.” She reached to pick up the sickly creature, but stopped herself. “No. Don’t want to end up in the Health Center with Mepro the dope.”

  She followed the bug. The others cleared a path for it through the nubby grasses. Haltingly the loner made its way to a sharp rock jutting from the ground. A glowing horizontal light showed Toori a wide crevice under the rock. That’s where the bug headed, dropping down and out of sight.