My Friend is an Alien - Edlund Niklas - Страница 12

Keith had been so petrified, being pulled across the lake by the alien equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster, that simply letting go hadn't occurred to him, but he finally did so, and the dragon swam off and submerged itself again. Frankly, Keith was more than a little angry. He swam back to his soaked friends. "What the hell was that thing doing in your program? I could've been eaten!"

Jahv tried not to grin. "Somebody put it in there as a joke, years ago. It's not even native to this world. Supposedly some expedition saw it on a largely uninhabited jungle world. I've tried to delete it, but it keeps cropping up. You weren't in any real danger. As you've said, it's only a hologram. You can't be harmed in here."

"Oh yeah?" protested Keith. "I just went bodysurfing at the tail end of a water dragon that was apparently the result of some alien hacker! My chest and my stomach feel like I've been bounced off of walls, and my arms feel like they've been dislocated!"

Jahv considered this. "It's possible that because my people are physically stronger than yours, you would feel a greater strain. I am sorry, Keith."

Keith nodded. He was calming down. He'd really just been given a nasty surprise. "Maybe there's somewhere else on your world we could visit?"

Jahv scratched his left antenna. Davy had learned that this was what Jahv did when he was in deep thought. "We could visit MetroCore. It's the largest city on my world. And there's a wonderful — what's your word —? Oh, yes. There's a wonderful Mall there."

"Sounds great, but aren't we going to be a little obvious?" asked Keith.

"Yes, I remember you said when you first met us that you'd never seen people quite like us before." added Davy. "And if this program is fully interactive…"

Jahv stared at his two friends. "Well, that's true. But both of you have fairly long hair. You could pretty well pass for Kintasians. As long as no one notices that your ears aren't pointed."

"What about how we're dressed?" asked Keith.

Jahv considered this, as well. "If anyone asks, which I doubt, since no one pays any more attention to children in MetroCore than they seem to in your society, just tell them you're recently freed servants. That'll explain the clothes and the hair."

"I think we've just had our fashion insulted." remarked Davy.

"What fashion?" countered Keith.

Jahv said, "Holocron Access" to the seemingly open field, and the device that had created it appeared at their feet. He made several adjustments and reactivated it. Second later, the lake and field around them shimmered and vanished, and was replaced by a wide open plaza, with huge, alien buildings on every side, towering to immense heights into the lavendar sky. The architecture was almost as varied as the strange people that the boys saw on every side. Some were like Jahv, others were clearly from different planetary races. One being seemed to be an eight foot lizard. Another seemed to be a walking statue, a person made of rock.

There was, of course, no shortage of Jahv's people, the Botarans in evidence. And as Jahv had explained when Keyro had arrived, and proven to be an entirely different color than Jahv, Botarans came in a great many different colors. The boys saw red Botarans, yellow Botarans, blue Botarans, even one with stripes and one with dots on his skin. The scary thing was how much they otherwise looked alike. They all dressed identically, in bland, grey, form-fitting outfits, they all had white hair, and every one of them was carrying what looked like a laptop computer, and probably was.

"Come on!" called Jahv, already walking towards the largest building in the distance. "MetroMall is this way."

"How is it there are so many different types of aliens on your world?" asked Davy.

"My world is a center for a lot of interplanetary techno-commerce." replied Jahv.

"I'm having a hard time seeing all this as a hologram." said Keith.

"Don't try to." explained Jahv. "Some of it isn't. I didn't want to go into too much detail, but the holocron automatically links to some of my other equipment, including the replicator. If you pick up food around here anyplace, it will be an actual sample of food. And anything or anyone that you touch is made solid by another device I've got, that I don't use much. It's sort of like the replicator, but it's used for dry goods. Non-food items. It's called a fabricator. I really brought it along in case I'd forgotten anything."

"In THAT backpack?" joked Davy.

"But what makes the — people — move and seem so real?" asked Keith.

"They're really just sort of mannequins, the ones we might come into actual contact with. But they're controlled by the holocron." explained Jahv as best as he could.

"Sort of like those robots at Disneyland in some of the attractions." offered Davy. "Just more complicated and more interactive."

Jahv nodded agreement, even though he didn't know what «Disneyland» was, but he understood «robots» and «interactive», and it was close enough.

By now they'd reached the entrance to the vast MetroMall and had entered. Five levels of shops along an immense, wide corridor were laid before the three boys. The names of the stores were all in alien script, which Davy and Keith couldn't read.

"So, what do you want to do first?" asked Jahv.

"I can't speak for Keith, but I'm hungry. It feels like we've walked a long way." said Davy.

"Go ahead and speak for me," said Keith. "I agree. But I guess now we'll find out if your food is safe for us!"

Jahv grinned. "Don't worry. I wouldn't let you eat anything dangerous. I know a good place in here, too."

The three boys scampered through the busy corridors of the Mall, but Davy and Keith were so busy looking around at the incredible sights that they weren't watching where they were looking, and Keith ran headfirst into a rather large and ugly-looking specimen of alien life.

It was humanoid, but had short-cropped fur all over its body, and was wearing some sort of armor-plating. If somebody had crossed a Wookiee with a Klingon, this would have been the result. It snarled something that sounded extremely threatening.

Keith was tired of getting hassled by grown-ups. Even ugly holographic alien ones. Before Davy or Jahv could react, Keith barked out a string of apparent gibberish and put up his fists. Incredibly, the huge alien's eyes went wide, he attempted to grin, backed off three steps, and then took off in a flying run. Keith wasn't sure whether to laugh or faint. He'd been reasonably sure he couldn't get too hurt in this holocron-created environment, but he certainly hadn't expected THAT!

"What did you say to him?" asked Davy.

"Actually, I'm not really sure." said Keith. "I was just pissed. So I decided I wasn't going to let a hologram push me around. Whatever I said, I got it from that kid in that Star Wars movie, Anakin Skywalker, when he was speaking to some alien before the podrace."

"It sounded a lot like Aldebarian." offered Jahv. "Which would explain why that Prokkop took off so fast. Aldebarans are the fiercest warrior race in the galaxy. You don't look anything like them, of course, but they have been known to train survivors from their raids on other planets, since they regard such survivors as warriors themselves."

"Well, now I'm really hungry." said Keith. "So where's some food?"

The three boys continued their journey, being more watchful of where they were going. There were many dozens of aliens wandering around, a great many of which were the blandly-dressed Botarans. There were a few other Botaran children running about, all of them naked. One boy, perhaps about five years old, had such neon-red skin that he was almost painful to look at. Finally, Davy worked up the nerve to ask a question. "Uh, Jahv, I guess fashion isn't much of a priority for you people?"