The Training Master Page 4

  Crouching down and whimpering like a two-year-old, I shut my eyes and prepared to be vaporized by the next meteor out of the chute. Seconds passed—who knew how many—but …

  … the next meteor never arrived.

  I opened my eyes.

  All was silent. There, no more than three yards in front of me, was the third egg.

  “Hey!” came Chibb’s shout. “Are you going to get up off the ground and go get that thing, or am I going to have to do it for you?”

  I rose cautiously and began taking the final steps to the third egg.

  “C’mon! Go! Go! Go!” Chibb sounded furious. “You’ve got thirty seconds!”

  When I got to the spot where the third egg lay, I did the only thing I could do: I lowered myself and tried picking it up with my knees. To my amazement I found that I was able to lift it with ease, and could even straighten up to a large degree without dropping it.

  Moving forward, however, was a different story.

  I wobbled precariously one step at a time, inching my way across the final thirty-odd yards between the nest and me. I tried moving more quickly, but the third egg started slipping and I had to slow down again.

  “Twenty seconds!” shouted Chibb. “Move!”

  Sweat poured down my face and back. My heart was pounding and my legs were starting to cramp up.

  I raised my head and got my first good look at the mother yoodoo bird: she was blue and yellow, with a big floppy crest on her head like a rooster. She watched me for a moment, yawned, and turned her attention to rearranging sticks in her nest.

  “Ten seconds!”

  The meteors had stopped entirely, as if they knew I had more than enough problems at the moment and had decided to cut me some slack.

  I wobbled forward with all the energy I had left. There were no more than twenty yards to go, but with so little time I knew I’d never make it.

  “Five!”

  I stopped and slowly sank to the ground, letting go of all three eggs and watching them roll into the grass around me.

  “Three … two … one …”

  BLAAAAYUUUUUUUUNG

  A huge, booming noise echoed across the field, low and sad, like a chorus of foghorns. I didn’t need anyone to explain the meaning to me.

  It was the sound of failure, pure and simple.

  Chapter 8

  “You flimped,” said Chibb. He and the others were standing in a semicircle, looking down at me with sympathetic expressions. I was in exactly the same spot where I’d dropped to the ground at the end of the exercise, legs folded, eyes locked on the grass in front of me.

  “Flimped?” said Mr. Beeba. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with the term.”

  “It’s Zarga Baffa jargon, I wouldn’t expect you to be,” said Chibb. He was making notes in a little notebook. “Flimping is what happens when your fears immobilize you. Akiko flimped when that big fellow over there”—he pointed at the minivan-sized meteor behind him, still sending clouds of smoke up from the grass—“nearly squashed her.” He sighed. “Fortunately she was able to recover, but make no mistake: it was the flimp that cost her the exercise. Without it she’d have made it to the nest just in time.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler. “You did good.”

  “Mmm,” said Chibb, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Nothing to be proud of, though. Excessive caution, indecision at every turn, and of course a full-blown flimp when the going got tough …” He stopped writing and raised his head. “I’ve no choice but to give you an A for this lesson, Akiko.”

  “An A?” I said, meeting his gaze for the first time since the exercise ended. It seemed too good to be true.

  “For acceptable.” He frowned and went back to his note taking. “It’s the middle grade in our five-letter scale: F for first-rate, D for distinguished, A for acceptable, P for problematic, and U for unacceptable.” He closed his book and tucked it into his robes. “Just be glad I didn’t give you an unacceptable. Three U’s and your whole team will be rejected from Zarga Baffa, just like the other Smoovian trainees before you.”

  I wanted to say something in my defense but decided to keep my mouth shut. It’s part of the Zarga Baffa method, I told myself. He’s just doing this to toughen me up, make me stronger.

  He straightened and clapped his hands twice. “All right. Back to the starting line.” He turned and marched across the field. “Let’s see if one of you can earn a D this time.”

  The rest of the morning crawled by. I watched as Gax and Spuckler took their turns, both of them getting the three eggs to the nest in the allotted time. Gax extended three mechanical arms from his body, one for each egg, and dodged the meteors as if he’d been designed especially for it. And Spuckler …well, Spuckler was Spuckler: we all expected him to be good at something like this, and he was. (Poog, having no arms or legs, was exempted from the lesson.) When it came time for Mr. Beeba’s turn, I confess I crossed my fingers and hoped for him to fail spectacularly. Anything to keep me from being the only one to do poorly.

  To the shock of everyone, Mr. Beeba outperformed us all.

  “Our first F of the day. Well done!” said Chibb as we left the field and proceeded to the next lesson. “Good heavens, old sport. You had one minute and twenty-two seconds to spare. That may be a record for a being of your height and weight.”

  “It was all a matter of luck,” said Mr. Beeba. “Well, that and the complex series of logarithms I performed in my head prior to the exercise, taking into account the terrain, wind direction, egg weight, and ratio of calories burned to molecules of oxygen inhaled per breath.”

  “Brilliant,” said Chibb, slapping Mr. Beeba on the back. “I can’t wait to see how you perform in our next lesson.”

  Good, I thought. We’re moving on to the next lesson. I’ve got a chance to redeem myself here. If I do well enough, they’ll all forget about this stupid yoodoo bird thing.

  Chapter 9

  I’d rather not get into the details of the second lesson of the morning. Basically it involved aquatic robots with jaws like sharks’, iron weights shackled to our ankles, and an enormous swimming pool filled with stinky green slime. Needless to say, I didn’t volunteer to go first.

  Fortunately I wasn’t the only one who did poorly this time. Spuckler snapped a jaw off one of the robots by mistake, and the green slime caused Gax to short-circuit about halfway through. Still, when it came to blowing a Zarga Baffa lesson, I was in a class by myself. The weights on my ankles got tangled as soon as I jumped into the pool, and I shot straight to the bottom. The robots came after me, and I totally forgot everything Chibb had said about how best to defend myself against them. After thirty seconds of kicking spastically, flailing my arms, and just generally freaking out, I pushed the panic button we’d each been given at the beginning of the exercise.

  When Chibb switched off the robots and fished me out of the slime, I saw that the next group of students—Dregger and his crew—had already come in with their training master, just in time to see my excellent demonstration of how not to do it. They were all laughing and pointing at me.

  “Very impressive,” said Dregger, snickering loudly. “But you’d better stick to something your own speed, kiddo. You know, like …” He walked over and leaned in close to me, his three beady eyes open wide. “… finger painting.”

  His pals busted up over this one, then turned to me, awaiting a response.

  Just ignore him, I told myself. Putting up a fight is only going to make things worse.

  “Use your head, now, Earthian,” said Dregger, strutting away from me as if he’d just slam-dunked a basketball. “You’ll think of a good comeback eventually.”

  “Come along, come along,” said Chibb, rushing us out of the room. “Time for lunch. You all need to get something in your stomachs for the afternoon lessons.” I’m pretty sure the real reason Chibb was in such a hurry had nothing to do with food and everything to do with his own reputation: my lousy performanc
e reflected badly on him as a training master.

  My grade? Chibb gave me a P. In my case it probably stood for pathetic.

  Lunch was the nastiest thing I’d ever seen anyone dare to dump on a plate. Calling it food was some kind of sick joke. It was cold, pinkish gray, and coiled tightly in on itself like a small intestine. It smelled like something scraped off the bottom of a fish tank. I didn’t want to put so much as a sliver of this thing in my mouth.

  So I didn’t. I just sat there staring at the walls of the drafty, dark room off the cafeteria where all the Humbling Week students were forced to eat. It was a dreary place, but it had one distinct advantage: it was free of Chibb Fallaby, who had left us there so that he could eat with the other training masters.

  “Gotta eat sometime, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler, thick gray liquid dripping from his nose and lips. “That roll you munched for breakfast ain’t even gonna take ya halfway through the afternoon. You’ll wind up so tuckered out you’ll faint dead away.”

  I knew Spuckler was right. And I was seriously hungry, there was no denying it. But I was determined to skip lunch anyway. Part of it was the gross-out factor of the food, of course. But there was something else. A weird sinking feeling inside me. The lousy grades I’d got, the things Chibb had said to me, the cold, wet hole that was waiting for me at the end of the day … it was all coming together and pushing down on me like a big, heavy rock.

  “Do you think it’s possible for us to switch training masters?” I asked anyone who cared to answer.

  Mr. Beeba swallowed noisily and adjusted his spectacles. “Good heavens, Akiko. Don’t tell me you’re dissatisfied with Master Fallaby. I think he’s been doing an exemplary job.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “Did you hear him call me ‘child’? Who does he think he is? I’ll bet he’s no more than five years older than I am, if that.”

  “I CERTAINLY SYMPATHIZE WITH YOUR FEELINGS, MA’AM,” said Gax. “BUT YOU MUSTN’T FORGET THAT THIS IS HUMBLING WEEK. MASTER FALLABY’S WORDS ARE NO DOUBT CALCULATED TO PRESS YOU ONWARD TO GREATER ACHIEVEMENTS.”

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Beeba. “It’s all part of the Zarga Baffa method. It’s nothing personal. He’s stoking the fires of your determination to succeed. A very clever tactic, really, if you step back and take a good look at it.”

  I thought this over. Gax and Mr. Beeba were probably right. Maybe if I really gave my all in the next lesson and showed everyone how serious I was about becoming a space patroller, Chibb would let up on me a little. Besides, it wasn’t Chibb I needed to focus on, but King Froptoppit and everyone else back on the planet Smoo. They were counting on us to graduate, and if that meant putting up with Chibb Fallaby, then I’d just have to learn to live with the guy.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure. I’ve got nowhere to go from here but up.”

  “You’re doin’ fine, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler. “You’ll be the best patroller this camp ever saw, jus’ you wait an’ see.”

  I smiled at Spuckler. Things weren’t so bad, really. Maybe they were about to get better.

  Chapter 10

  The afternoon lessons started out pretty well. Chibb led us to an outdoor section of the training camp that looked like a scale model of the Grand Canyon. We had to practice riding these six-legged lizards called nognags, which were as big as cows and just as slow-moving. They had black and orange skin and long, pointy anteater snouts.

  There were reasons to be optimistic. My parents had allowed me to take riding lessons at camp a couple of summers earlier, so I already had some experience. The teacher had even said I was a natural. Of course, a horse and a six-legged lizard are two very different things, but even so, I felt I had a head start on this one.

  Chibb taught us four words before he let us get in the saddle: k-chooka, which made the animals go faster; whup-whup, which made them go slower; sh-zilla, which made them jump; and pastabak, which made them come to a complete stop. I had the words pretty well memorized as we made our way onto the path we’d be following for the duration of the exercise: a narrow dusty trail that led through a series of ravines and gullies designed to test our riding skills.

  “K-chikka!” yelled Spuckler, trying to get his nognag to pick up the pace. “I said k-chikka, ya dagnabbed slowpoke. What are ya, stone deaf?”

  “It’s k-chooka, Spuckler,” I said, smiling. Finally, something I’m good at.

  “Thanks, ’Kiko,” said Spuckler before bellowing into his nognag’s ears: “K-chooka! K-CHOOOOOOOOKAAAAA!” The half-asleep beast shuddered irritably, began moving slightly faster for a moment, then resumed his original slow lope.

  “Aw, for cryin’ out loud,” moaned Spuckler. “This here nognag’s the slowest beast a burden in the whole goldurned galaxy!”

  “But of course, Spuckler,” said Chibb from his own nognag, bringing up the rear of our little troop. “I deliberately put you on old Swappy there for that very reason: to test your patience. It’s just what you need to round out your adventuring abilities.”

  So Chibb paired us with different nognags depending on what we needed to learn. Maybe there’s something to this Zarga Baffa method after all.

  The nognags carried us around a bend and down to a gently babbling brook.

  “We’re going to cross this stream one at a time,” called Chibb. “Nognags have a strong aversion to water. The only way to get through is to increase speed until they’re forced across by their own momentum.”

  I watched as Spuckler, Gax, Mr. Beeba, and Poog guided their nognags through the water with varying degrees of success. The riverbed was muddy, and the nognags howled in protest, but everyone made it to the other side in one piece. It looked tricky but doable.

  “Your turn, Akiko,” Chibb said from behind me. I turned and saw a trace of a smile on his lips.

  I’ll start with a couple of k-chookas and maybe throw in a sh-zilla or two if I get stuck.

  I patted my nognag and whispered in its ear. “Help me out here, big guy. I’ve already blown two lessons today. Get me across this river and I’ll …” I took the reins in my hands and gripped them as hard as I could. “… I don’t know, give you an apple or something.”

  I took one last peek at Chibb, then turned and focused on the stream. I took a deep breath and said loudly and clearly, “K-chooka!”

  I saw a flash of red somewhere off to my left—very small, but very bright. A split second later—whoosh!—my nognag took off so quickly I thought it must have sprouted wings.

  Water exploded all over me as we plunged into the stream and tore across it in a split second. We barreled out of the water like a rocket, sending stones and pebbles flying in all directions. I caught a blurry glimpse of Spuckler and Mr. Beeba diving off their nognags to get out of our path.

  Chibb cried something—for the life of me, I have no idea what—as the nognag charged up over a hill and carried me away.

  A lunatic lizard! was all I could think as the nognag left the trail altogether and galloped into an impossibly narrow ravine. Chibb put me on a lunatic lizard!

  Rocks. Sky. Clouds of dust. There was no making sense of what we were doing or where we were going. I just held on to the reins for dear life and hoped we wouldn’t smash straight into a wall of stone.

  The nognag howled like a wolf as it leaped off the side of a good-sized cliff. I stared in horror at the ground, fully sixty feet below, nothing but air between it and me.

  Fifty feet.

  Forty.

  Thirty.

  Twenty.

  Ten.

  FWAM!

  The nognag struck the ground and shot back off it like a ricocheting bullet.

  All right, that does it. I’m letting go.

  I shut my eyes and released my grip on the reins.

  “Yyyyyaaarrrrgh!”

  The sensation of burning on my wrists was unbearable. My arms were entangled with the reins. Like it or not, I was attached to this nognag for the duration.

  The word f
or “stop”! What’s the word for “stop”?

  Normally I had a very good short-term memory. But with the reins burning into my wrists and my body flipping back and forth like a hooked fish, it was impossible to concentrate long enough to recall the word I needed.

  The nognag was now hurtling through a field of towering cactuslike plants, clearing them by mere inches on either side. Needles grazed my arms and shoulders, sending stabs of pain through my entire body.

  Paster-something.

  “Pasternak!”

  Nope. The nognag seemed—if anything—to be gathering speed as it reached the edge of the riding range, leaped a fence, and tore off into an entirely different part of the training complex. Within seconds we were charging straight into a playing field where advanced trainees were in the middle of a game that looked something like lacrosse.

  Pasta. It was Pasta something.

  “Pasta pack!”

  Trainees, shouting their dismay, leaped out of the way as we sped across the field and crashed through a row of bleachers, sending a group of one-eyed aliens flying through the air. Angry cries echoed behind me as the nognag cut through a gigantic hangar full of astroshuttles, hung left, then set its sights on one of the glass domes on the edge of the Zarga Baffa complex.

  No! Not through the glass!

  There was only one hope: I had to remember the stop word, and it had to be now.

  “Pasta whack! Pasta jack! Pasta shack! Pasta plaque!”

  The nognag jumped a row of tall hedges, the only thing left to keep it from plowing into the side of the dome.

  “Pasta knack! Pasta flack! Past a stack! Passed a snack!”

  I had only seconds left. It was now or never.

  “Pastabak!”

  It was the right word. I knew it. And if the nognag had actually heard it, we would have stopped just in time. But the lizard was so out of control by this point I might as well have shouted “Abracadabra” into its ear for all the good it did.