"GRAKKER!" CRIED LITTLE THING ONE, CLAPPING her hands.
"And Madame Pong!" added Little Thing Two.
My mother sighed. "They're just toys," she told the twins sharply.
"Uh-uh," said Little Thing One. "They're real. Ask Roddie."
My mother turned to me, an exasperated look on her face. "Rod, will you please tell them the truth?"
Setting Grakker and Madame Pong gently onto the counter, I said, " We-l-l-l-l . . . the truth is, the twins are right."
Mom started to say something, and I could tell from her face that it was going to be kind of cranky. I actually felt bad when she stopped herself from snapping at me, because I knew she was holding back out of fear that if she said something wrong, I might disappear again. After a moment she said, very calmly, "Rod, please. I don't want you getting the twins all wound up in some . . . some . . ."
Looking past me to the shelf where the aliens stood, she gasped, then put her hand to her mouth and staggered backward.
Madame Pong had put her long, yellow hands together and was making a graceful bow. "Please do not be alarmed, Mrs. Allbright," she said softly. "We bring you greetings from the stars."
Grakker snorted. Given how cranky he could be, I was glad that was all he did. I just hoped he would remember his promise not to use his ray gun in the house.
Mom's head swiveled back and fourth between me and the tiny aliens so fast it looked as if she was watching a Ping-Pong game.
"Rod?" she whispered hoarsely. "How did you do that?"
"They're real, Mom," I said gently. "Friends of mine."
I didn't add the biggest news, which was that while I hadn't actually gone off with Dad (as Madame Pong has said in the letter she left behind to cover my absence), the aliens claimed to know something about what had happened to him.
One thing at a time would do for now.
"We have to talk, Mrs. Allbright," said Madame Pong.
Mom nodded, unable to answer. The twins scurried to the counter and put their hands on the edge of it, struggling to get their faces high enough to see the aliens.
"Greetings, Larvae," said Grakker.
Madame Pong shot him a sharp glance, then turned back to the twins and said, "How pleasant to see you again, young ones."
She was dressed, as a usual, in an open, high-collared robe whose color moved through a range of purples and blues, depending on how the light hit it. Beneath the robe she wore a long lavender shift. Her large, pointed ears framed a high-domed, bald head. She was slender and graceful.
Grakker, on the other hand, looked like a refugee from the World Wrestling Federation. His bulky, muscular body was covered by a uniform that was mostly red, with yellow-gold highlights. His green face looked something like a gorilla's might if you shave off all its hair and stuck a pair of tiny horns on its forehead. Even though he was just about the crankiest being I had ever met, I had grown to respect him—even kind of like him—during our various adventures.
Little Thing One started to reach for him, then thought better of it. I could tell she was remembering the last time she had tried to pick him up.
Little Thing Two leaned close to the aliens and whispered, "Thank you for bringing Roddie back.
Madame Pong smiled and nodded. Considering our plans, I was surprised she could do that without getting a guilty look on her face. I surely would have. But then, I could barely lie to save my own life. She was a professional diplomat, and it was part of her job to hide her feelings when necessary.
Looking up at my mother, Madame Pong said, "Perhaps we could go into your living room and sit down? I have to apologize for our size, by the way. I felt it would be better for us to come in with Rod, and we couldn't really do that our full height without alarming you more than we already have."
She didn't mention that even at full height the aliens still only came up to about my waist. Grakker considered that some sort of top-secret information.
Mom moved briefly into hostess mode. "Can I get you anything?" she asked. "some coffee, or tea, or . . ."
Her attempt at pretending things were normal didn't last long. Her voice trailed off, and she waved her hands in confusion.
"We're fine," said Madame Pong with a smile.
"Uh-do you want us to carry you?"
"We'd rather fly," said Grakker. Activating his rocket belt, he zoomed into the air, then said, "Lead the way, Deputy Allbright."
"Deputy?" asked my mother
"Yeah, deputy," said Elspeth bitterly. "Rod has all the luck. I wish my father was a—"
She fell silent. For a moment I wondered if she had a momentary attack of common sense. Then I realized that Madame Pong had also launched herself into the air. Unlike Grakker, she had flown straight towards Elspeth, which had startled her into closing her mouth long enough to remember that she wasn't supposed to say anything about my father.
That was to be Madame Pong's job.
"You wish your father was a what, Elspeth?" asked my mother sharply.
"A good guy," said Elspeth, quickly if unconvincingly.
Mom was clearly suspicious of this answer, but held off on her questions when Madame Pong said, "Please, let us go to the other room to talk. All—or at least as much as we know—will be explained in time."
My mother nodded, and we went into the living room.
Grakker and Madame Pong stationed themselves on the coffee table. Madame Pong stood. Grakker sat on the spine of a mystery novel. The twins crouched eagerly at the end of the table. I could tell they were dying to get their hands on the little aliens, but they knew better than to try.
Mom sat on the love seat, right in front of the coffee table. So she was pretty close to the aliens, too. Elspeth and I sat on either side of her. I could see Mom's hands shaking, which only made me feel more like a slug slime than I did already. Putting them on her knees to stop the trembling, she said, "All right, tell me everything."
So we did, starting with the first time I met the aliens, which was when they crashed through my bedroom window and landed in the papier-mâché I was using for my school project. There were a lot of interruptions and questions along the way, of—including one when Mom apologized to Grakker for the time she had picked him up because she thought he was a toy and she wanted to give him back to Billy Becker.
Mom kept glancing at me through all this. When she found out that Billy Becker was really an incredibly vicious intergalactic villain names BKR*, she apologized to me as well, for trying to make me be nice to him all those times.
She got pretty upset when we told her how Smorkus Flinders had kidnapped me and Elspeth into The Old Lobby in order to get revenge on Grakker.
Grakker himself got upset when we told Mom about how Flinge Iblik, our Master of the Mental Arts (also known as "Snout," because of his long purple face) had mysteriously faded away while we were in The Old Lobby.
But it was when we got to the end of the story that things really went over the edge. I was trying to explain why the aliens had been flying near our house to begin with. Looking carefully at Mom, I said, "So I take it you didn't know the truth about Dad?"
"What truth?" she asked sharply.
"Man," said Elspeth. "Uncle Art was even sneakier than my Dad."
"He wasn't sneaky!" I snapped. "He had his reasons."
"Rod," said my mother. "What are you talking about?"
Madame Pong stepped forward. "Mrs. Allbright, I am sure your husband had his reasons for not telling you, but the time has come for you to know the truth. Your husband was . . . well . . . not of this world."
My mother looked from the aliens to me, from me to the aliens.
Then she fell off the love seat.
I know how she felt. I had been pretty boggled myself when I found out Dad was from outer space. Of course, in Mom's case, it only meant that she had married an alien. In my case, it means I am part alien—though even turned out to be more complicated that I expected.
When we finally got Mom sitting up again, she asked me to make her a cup of tea. I was glad to, since it provided a good excuse for everyone to be quiet for a while. When I brought her the tea, she waited for it to cool, then took three long, slow sips before she was ready to talk again. Even then the cup rattled as she placed it back on the saucer. Finally she looked at Madame Pong.
"Are you seriously telling me that my husband is an alien?"
"Perhaps alien is an unfortunate word. I would prefer to say he is a citizen of the galaxy."
My mother snorted. "So am I."
Madame pong looked a little uncomfortable, which was unusual for her. "Strictly speaking, that is not true. After all, Earth is not a part of the League of Worlds."
My mother's nostrils flared, the way they do when she thinks someone is insulting her. "Let's not split hairs. The point is, Art wasn't human. Is that right?"
Madame Pong nodded.
Mom sighed. "The worst thing about this is that I can just hear my parents saying 'I told you so' when they find out. All right, tell me the rest. Why was he here? Am I some sort of experi—" She broke off. Her eyes wide, she looked from me to the twins, then back again.
"The kids!" she said hoarsely. "What about the kids?"
"Oh, they have full galactic citizenship," said Madame Pong.
"That's not what I meant! What does this mean for them? How weird are they going to be?"
"How weird was your husband?"
"Plenty!" Mom relaxed a little and actually smiled. "But then, that was part of why I loved him." She sat up straight again, and I could see that ideas and questions were zooming in and out of her brain faster than she could keep track of them. "But why did he marry me? And why did he leave?"
"Love is a great mystery," said Madame Pong. "Why he married you, I cannot say—though for him to marry a nongalactic citizen is a serious thing, and I suspect indicates a very deep connection. Why did he leave? I cannot answer that, either, except to tell you that we have reason to believe it was not voluntary."
Mom's eyes grew still wider. "He was kidnapped?" she asked in horror.
"That is one possibility, or it could be that he fled Earth in order to lure some menace away from you and the children. It may even be that he was drawn away by some unexpected but urgent duty."
My mother nodded. Duty was something she understood. She was always doing something or other—helping out at church, taking a meal to a sick neighbor, volunteering at school—because she thought it was her duty. It used to be that I wished she would stay home more. Now I was starting to have a different idea if duty myself.
Madame Pong spread her arms. "I assume it had something to do with BKR. However, the opposite could also be true, that BKR was here because of your husband. Please remember, Mrs. Allbright, Captain Grakker and I are not the leaders of the galaxy, but merely its servants. On some matters, not all is made known to us. Much of this is a mystery to us as well as you."
She had pretty much told me the same thing. It was very frustrating, because there was so much I wanted to know about my father: not just why he was here, but who he really was, his whole life story. But all the crew could tell me was that Dad was "well thought of at the highest levels of the galaxy."
"That's all I know, Rod," Madame pong said apologetically after I had asked her about Dad for the seventh or eighth time. "You must understand that there are many levels of power above me. Information is not always easy to come by."
Of course, when I thought about it, I hadn't cared that much about Dad's life story back when I thought he was just an earthling. Like most of my friends, I knew a little bit about my parents' past, but I had never really asked them about it, never really tried to find out who they were. I always thought it was sad that both Dad's parents were gone—he had never said "dead" I realized, just "gone"—but I hadn't given it much more attention. He was my dad, and that was enough.
Until he disappeared.
I had been angry at him for so long for abandoning us that even now, when I knew the truth, I sometimes had to remind myself he hadn't just ran off, that something far stranger was going on. It's weird how anger can stay with you, even when the reason for being angry is gone.
Anyway, the aliens were looking for my father which was exactly what Madame Pong was saying to my mother: "We are about to embark on a search for your husband, Mrs. Allbright."
"Good," whispered Mom. "I miss him."
Madame Pong nodded and rolled right on to her next point, the big one:
"We want to take Rod with us."