You Can't Have My Planet Page 4

  “No. They don’t have any force-field capability.”

  “Can they talk?”

  “No, they’re just buttons. Just large round buttons. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said, embarrassed, “they’re just buttons.”

  I think she was a little irritated. I have a way of annoying people. I can’t help it.

  “I’ve been appointed by the court to provide legal counsel,” she said.

  “Legal counsel?” I said, popping a donut in my mouth. “For what?”

  Even with trouble lurking, I can still find time for a donut.

  “Because the lease has fallen into your hands, you are obligated to represent your species at the Halls of Universal Justice.”

  “Uh-oh.” It was probably supposed to fall into the hands of a grown-up. Or maybe Bobby was supposed to find it. After all, he was far more qualified than I was to represent our species.

  Even if it was a cosmic blunder, I wasn’t about to say anything.

  What I did say was, “Tula, I have a hard time believing an entire species can get evicted.”

  Tula picked up her leather briefcase. She pressed a black button right below the handle. We vanished.

  We reappeared one second later in a hideous place that didn’t contain a single color except drab gray. No yellows or blues or burgundies or lavenders. No sign of life: no trees, no birds, no fish or flowers, no streams or ponds or gardens or fields or forests, no grass, no soil. Nothing except cement. Every square inch of the planet was made out of cement. Even the most desolate desert on Earth was nothing compared to the nothingness of this dump.

  It chilled me to the bone. “What happened?” I said. “Where are we?”

  “This is Desoleen. This is where you and the rest of the humans will be sent if the eviction process is allowed to proceed,” Tula said.

  “Are you sure you don’t want my brother?” I said. “He’s a lot smarter than me. I think he’s the one who should be here. There’s a donut in my bedroom going stale right now ’cuz I’m not eating it. Do you really think that’s fair to the donut?

  “Sorry, Giles. The lease fell into your hands.”

  “But it was a mistake.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It can’t be reversed.”

  “We’re about to get eaten by monsters,” I screamed. “Can that be reversed?”

  They were in a pack, flying right at us.

  “They aren’t monsters, Giles. They’re Kundabons.”

  “What’s a Kundabon?” I said.

  “They are the guardians of Desoleen. They’re like prison guards on Earth.”

  Each one was ten feet tall and albino. Their red eyes were triangle shaped, with black slits for pupils. Their dirty white wings were featherless, colorless, leathery and bat-like. Their thick rodent tails were longer than their towering bodies. Each tail had a giant knot at the end, turning it into a deadly ball and chain.

  “Those aren’t prison guards,” I assured her. “Those are monsters. I know the difference between a guard and a monster. We Earth kids are really good at identifying monsters. It’s our specialty. We can’t fly. We can’t shoot fire out of our fingertips. But we know a monster when we see one.”

  One of the Kundabons broke off from the pack. He smacked his tail on the ground and the knot at the end of the tail turned into a cage!

  It dived right at me. I ducked, screaming.

  “I dare you to try to escape,” howled the monster, dangling his ghostly white cage over my head.

  My lawyer met the monster’s grim gaze fearlessly. “My client can leave whenever he wants,” she said. “His species has not been evicted.”

  “No, but they will be.” The Kundabon leered at me. “And when they do, I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be waiting for the day when you try to escape from Desoleen. Do you hear me? I will follow you into black holes, through parallel universes. I don’t care if it takes me one thousand years, I will hunt you down.”

  It flew back over by the other monsters.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “Not only is he ferocious and creepy, he’s dedicated. This monster is committed to his job.”

  Another Kundabon came zooming down and swung its cage over my head. But it didn’t try to stuff me inside it.

  “Hey, Tula, you’re sure they can’t touch me?” I asked.

  “I’m positive,” Tula said.

  “Hey, Kundabon,” I yelled, “I’m not going in your smelly cage. ’Cuz we’re not getting evicted.”

  “That’s it, Giles,” Tula said. “Don’t give in to fear.”

  The Kundabons all turned their tails into cages. They rose high into the air, howling, banging their cages together, creating a ghoulish racket.

  “You Kundabons are such losers,” I screamed. “I’d rather be a cockroach than a Kundabon.”

  I was insulting a monster. Dude, I was insulting a monster.

  Each cage had white bristly hairs on it. “Tula, is the cage part of a Kundabon’s body?”

  “Yes, Giles. The bars are made out of bone.”

  Bone? That freaked me out. I did not need to hear that. Whoever heard of a cage made out of bone? How can a cage be part of your body? How can you grow a cage just like you’d grow an arm or a leg?

  I fixed my eyes on the closest Kundabon. One of the bars on his cage had a big hairy wart on it.

  That did it. When you see a big hairy wart on a prison bar it kind of ruins your day. I didn’t feel like teasing them anymore. In fact, what I really wanted to do was throw up.

  “Tula,” I begged, “get me out of here.”

  She pressed the black button on her briefcase and we returned to my bedroom in Manhattan.

  I grabbed my lawyer’s hand in a spasm of fear. “Will you help us, Tula?”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” she said. “May I see the lease please?”

  I handed it to her.

  She unrolled the long parchment and examined it carefully. “Just as I thought. There’s a clause here that may be helpful.”

  Well, at least she could read it. But did she have the power to get me out of this mess?

  “Aren’t you kind of young to be a lawyer?” I said.

  “Kind of young?” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re just a girl.”

  “So?” She chuckled. “The next thing you’ll be telling me is that I’m too blue.” She gave me a suspicious glance. “You don’t have anything against blue people, do you?”

  “No,” I said, “I think blue people are amazing. All I’m saying is that I want a real lawyer.”

  “If you don’t want me, you can request another lawyer,” she said glumly.

  I thought she was cute, in an iridescent sort of way, but I certainly didn’t want her knowing that, so I said, “I guess I’ll take you. But don’t screw up.”

  She rolled her eyes and grabbed her briefcase. “Are you ready?”

  “Wait. Hold on a second. How long are we going to be gone? I don’t want to freak Grandma out.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll plant a hologram of you fast asleep in bed. If she pops her head in the room, everything will seem perfectly normal.”

  The Giles hologram was quite convincing. A pillow was squashed between my legs, Giles style.

  Tula pressed the black button on her briefcase. A second later, we were standing outside the Halls of Universal Justice.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE BUILDING was a platinum castle supported by pillars of mist. When I tapped on one of the pillars, my hand went right through it. “Tula, how can a pillar be made out of mist?”

  “Giles, the things you can’t grab hold of are stronger than the things you can.”

  Outside the entrance, a reporter with bubble-gum lipstick and a mushroom-shaped head was clutching a microphone. She spotted us and nudged her robot cameraman. “Look. The defendant has arrived.” She stuck her microphone in my face. “Do you honestly feel that your species deserves to live on Earth after all th
e destruction you’ve caused?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Tula said.

  “No comment,” I mumbled into the microphone.

  Smiling nervously into the camera, I followed my lawyer up the steps, between the misty pillars into the Halls of Universal Justice.

  A hush fell over the crowded courtroom when I walked down the aisle. The aliens watched me with a mixture of fear and fascination.

  Tula and I sat down at a table up front.

  You know how some buildings have ivy racing up the side to the roof? Well, this courthouse had ivy growing on the inside. It ran along all four walls. Bizarre birds nested inside it, phosphorescent toucans, bright orange pigeons.

  The judge’s desk, now unoccupied, was separated from the rest of the courtroom by a bubbling brook that gushed out of one wall and vanished into another. A quaint little steel bridge arched over the brook.

  I wished all the cute girls in New York could’ve seen me, a hero striding through a courthouse-greenhouse. It was the most organic place I’ve ever been. It had the heartbeat of a thousand jungles.

  Was this a glimpse of what Earth could’ve been or might yet be?

  Shafts of golden light came slanting down through the glass ceiling. Each column of light swarmed with dust particles that made a weird whispering sound, like voices murmuring.

  “Tula, who’s making all that racket?” I asked.

  She pulled a magnifying glass from her briefcase and handed it to me. I held it up to a shaft of light. The dust particles were in fact microscopic creatures, thousands of them. Their antennae were twice as long as their bodies. They dived and tumbled through the air, doing perfectly executed back flips and swan dives, waving to me.

  “Who are they, Tula?”

  “Pollendoozees.”

  “Are they our friendzees?”

  “Absolutezees,” she said, laughing.

  I shifted my attention over to the steel bridge. It’s not every day you see a steel bridge in the middle of a courtroom.

  It looked just like the Brooklyn Bridge, actually. Weird.

  “Hey, Tula,” I said. “The bridge was over there a second ago. What’s it doing over by the wall?”

  “It moved.”

  “What do you mean it moved? Bridges can’t move.”

  “This one can.”

  Like most steel bridges, this thing was covered with rivets. All of a sudden, one of the rivets turned into an eyeball. It stared right at me. Luckily I didn’t scream. You’re not supposed to scream in a courtroom. But bridges aren’t supposed to have eyes either.

  One by one, the bridge opened its hundred eyes.

  “It’s a Bridgeling, Giles,” Tula whispered. “It sees everything.”

  A little Bridgeling crawled out from underneath the other bridge, which appeared to be its mother. The baby Bridgeling couldn’t reach the other side of the brook yet. Every time it tried to arch over the water, it fell in. It climbed dripping wet onto its mother’s back.

  Just in case you were wondering, Bridgelings move by arching their backs like worms.

  “Bridgelings can be used to cross rivers and streams,” Tula said. “They also come in handy if you’re trying to move between galaxies or travel through parallel universes. They’re invaluable if you have to cross a black hole or if you’re in a big rush to get from the world of logic to the world of magic.”

  My mouth didn’t just hit the floor. It almost hit a neighboring star system.

  “They’re almost extinct,” Tula said with deep sadness. “They were wiped out by evil things because Bridgelings serve only kindness. These are the last two Bridgelings in the entire universe. This courtroom is their sanctuary.”

  I felt like walking over to the Bridgelings and saying, “Don’t worry, dudes. I’ll protect you.”

  Suddenly there was commotion. A loud buzz of aliens gossiping erupted in the courtroom as Queen Mooby and King Zoodle shuffled down the aisle. A purple girl paraded in between them. She must’ve been their daughter because her nose was raised high in the air in an unmistakable display of imperial snootiness. She had mint-colored hair with slinky-sized curls. She wore a pink halter top and matching go-go boots. Her jeans, glittering with scales, looked as if they were made from the skin of a dragon.

  I had a feeling that’s who everyone was gossiping about.

  “Mom,” said the purple girl, “when can we move to Earth?”

  “As soon as the humans get evicted, dear,” replied the queen.

  The girl breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Our planet is such a dump. I’m embarrassed to show my friends where I live.”

  “Isn’t Earth a dump?” asked a cyborg hanging out in the back of the courtroom.

  “Not compared to our planet,” said the purple girl.

  The reporter with the mushroom-shaped head aimed her microphone at King Zoodle. “Your Excellency,” she said, “you’ve taken most of the blame for the environmental degradation on your planet. Rebel forces are growing. Your popularity is at an all time low. Do you have any comment?”

  The king gave a tense smile. “My popularity will skyrocket when millions of my loyal subjects move to Earth. The rebels can stay where they are and rot, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The reporter turned her attention to the purple girl. “Princess Petulance, you’re not in handcuffs. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  The princess chuckled. She knew how to handle the media.

  “How does it feel to be the biggest juvenile delinquent in the entire universe?” asked the reporter.

  “It feels really cool,” said the princess.

  Queen Mooby put her hand over the microphone and hissed at her daughter, “That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say ‘I’ve changed my ways. I’ve grown up. I’ve finally matured.’”

  “Jeez, Mom. Do you want me to lie? I thought honesty was a big deal in this family.”

  Princess Petulance sat down alongside her parents five rows behind us. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had a pirate tattooed on her right arm. He slept on a hammock slung between two tattoo palm trees. His green belly rose up and down while he dozed off.

  He was snoring. The tattoo was snoring!

  “Hey, Tula,” I whispered, “her tattoo is alive.”

  “So?” Tula said.

  The pirate snored so loudly everyone in the courtroom could hear.

  An ogre-size bailiff came over and nervously tapped the princess on the shoulder. Although he towered over her, his voice cracked with fear. “Miss, if you don’t tell your tattoo to be quiet, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  The princess gave him a nasty look. The ogre hurried away. The purple girl told her pirate to shut up. The tattoo pirate lifted his head up groggily from the hammock, grabbed a tattoo jug of rum and took a big swig.

  Tula saw me gawking at the princess. “You don’t think she’s cute, do you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you?” Tula said, elbowing me in the ribs.

  “No,” I said.

  Tula breathed a sigh of relief. Was she jealous? I think she was. I never made a girl jealous before. It was so cool!

  “So tell me, Princess,” said the reporter, “what changes will you make to Earth when you move there?”

  “I’m turning Central Park into a mall,” she said proudly. “I’m filling the Long Island Sound with bubble bath.”

  “Won’t it poison the marine life?” asked the reporter.

  The princess shrugged. “More room for my rubber ducky.”

  “What else will you do?” asked the reporter.

  “I’m building a mile-high sand castle in the Sahara Desert,” said the princess.

  “What if it collapses in a wind storm?”

  “That’s precisely the point. All the prisoners tied up inside it will be crushed to death. All those who tried to dethrone my father. All those who said I don’t look good in jeans. Death by sand castle. That’s much more original than death
by firing squad, don’t you think?”

  Jerry pranced into the courtroom. He murmured something to Princess Petulance, who nodded in agreement and glared at Tula with murderous hatred.

  Tula leaned over and whispered in my ear, “She’ll stop at nothing to get Earth, Giles. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Hey, Giles,” Jerry said, “isn’t Desoleen beautiful?”

  I tried to ignore him.

  “And those Kundabons,” he said. “They’re so charming.”

  Both Bridgelings stared at Jerry. Even the baby thought he was a loser.

  “All rise,” proclaimed the bailiff.

  Everyone in the room flew up to the ceiling, except Tula and me.

  “Take hold of my briefcase,” Tula said.

  I grabbed the handle and rose up in the air alongside her. When your lawyer can help you levitate you know you’ve got good representation.

  Down below, a door opened. The judge emerged. It looked as if he was made out of pure crystal. He walked across Mama Bridgeling to get to his desk, careful not to step on Junior along the way. He made a melodious tinkling sound like wind chimes as he moved. He was a crystal being, transparent but not invisible. I mean, there he was. Stuff flickered inside him, gold and silver lights that were the suggestion of eyes and a mouth. He was an awesome shimmering presence who commanded the entire room without saying a word. When he finally spoke, his voice was kind yet mighty. “Should the humans be allowed to continue their stewardship of Earth? This is the question we must now ponder.”

  Stewardship? What the heck was that?

  Tula and I sank slowly back to our seats, along with everyone else.

  The judge signaled the alien prosecutor to deliver his opening statement.

  The prosecutor stood up and cleared his throat. “Your Honor, we, the citizens of the universe, demand that the humans be evicted from planet Earth.”

  The crowd exploded. Jerry cheered the loudest.

  “Order in the court,” the judge demanded.

  “Your Honor,” continued the prosecutor, “they have violated one thousand, two hundred, seventy-three clauses in the lease.”

  “That’s alotta clauses,” I whispered nervously to Tula.

  “Look what they have done to that beautiful planet,” boomed the prosecutor. “Millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. We can’t even begin to measure the damage done to the fish who inhabit those waters. And that’s just the beginning. There isn’t one body of water or one piece of land on Earth that isn’t contaminated. Thanks to humankind, it’s one of the dirtiest planets in the galaxy.”