The Robot Did It

by Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, (for “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” “Beggars in Spain,” “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” “Fountain of Age," "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall," and "Yesterday's Kin"), two Hugos (for “Beggars in Spain” and “The Erdmann Nexus”), a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Probability Space). Most recent works are the Nebula-winning Yesterday’s Kin (Tachyon, 2014) and The Best of Nancy Kress (Subterranean, 2015). Her work has been translated into Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read.

In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including Clarion; in 2008 she was the Picador visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

My name is Nia. I am ten years old. Robots suck. That is all I am going to say right now because I am too mad to say anything else.

Okay, it is later and I have calmed down. A little bit, anyway—enough to say this: It was not my fault. It wasn’t H’raf’s fault, either, no matter what Mom says. The whole thing was the robot’s fault. Totally. To blame H’raf and me is just wrong!

Now I’m more calm. Maybe it was a little bit my fault, and a little bit H’raf’s. But mostly the robot’s. And it isn’t even fair to blame H’raf and me because we didn’t mean it to happen. I would never deliberately almost destroy Moon Colony Alpha! I love Alpha! I grew up there! The part that was H’raf’s and my fault wasn’t planned, it just sort of happened. And all because of language.

Mostly.

This is what happened: As soon as summer vacation started in Colesville, Illinois, my family traveled back to Moon Base Alpha, where I used to live. We went back because some aliens had landed on the moon. Their scientists were working with our scientists, which included my mom because she’s an important biologist. Also, the aliens wanted their kids to play with human kids because kids can learn each other’s languages more easily than adults can. Dad says that’s because after twelve or so, human brains get “less plastic” and don’t pick up foreign languages as easily. Every time he says that, I think of plastic Tupperware in my head and start laughing. Dad laughs, too, but it annoys Mom. She thinks I should be more serious. Also more careful and less impulsive and a lot of other things I’m mostly not.

But the three alien kids and us three human kids on Alpha liked each other. We played together all summer. Not that you can tell it’s summer on the moon; we don’t have seasons. We played tag in the rock corridors of Alpha, which is underground, and we had picnics above ground under the Dome, where you can see a gazillion stars all the time and Earth hangs in the sky like a big blue-and-white ball.

We played in the aliens’ apartments, too. They breathe different air than we do, so when we were in their homes, Ben and Jillian and I had to wear space suits with air packs on our backs, and when we were all in human spaces—which was most of the time—the alien kids wore their space suits, which were a lot lighter and better looking than ours, and which somehow turned our air into their air without air packs. Our scientists studied that a lot.

It was a good summer, even though I missed my friends on Earth and my dad's dog, Bandit. We played basketball and tag and a weird alien game that involved blinking lights and a lot of somersaults. H’raf, an alien boy, and I got to be good friends. They look a little weird—bluish, with six tentacles where we have five fingers. They also have tails. But you get used to all that, and H’raf, Jinfroh, and B-b-b-jump! were nice. We three human kids learned to speak a lot of their language, which we called Alienese. Well, you don’t just speak it, which is why their names are so strange.

It’s also what caused all the trouble later on.

“Tell me again how to say his name,” Dad said, after H’raf left our apartment to go home for dinner. We can’t ever eat together. Our food would make them sick, and theirs would sicken us. Still, anything they eat can’t be any worse than broccoli. I hate broccoli.

I told Dad a lot of times already how to say H’raf’s name, but he can’t seem to get it right. “You blow air out your lips real fast, say ‘raf,’ and raise up your left pinkie.” All words in Alienese use both sound and body movements. “Try it.”

Dad tried it.

I said, “No, you just said ‘sleeping mat.’ H’raf is not a sleeping mat. Like this.” I showed him again.

This time he did better. He said, “And how do you say the girl’s name?”

“Jinfroh. Sort of gargle on the ‘Jin’ part, then spit out ‘froh’ real fast while you twist your right wrist to the left.”

Dad didn’t gargle right. I said, “You just said ‘rock head.’”

“I give up. I never was much good at languages!”

Actually it’s a good thing that Dad gave up, because the littlest alien kid’s name is the hardest: B-b-b-jump! You stutter with your lips, jump up, and make a clicking sound. If you make the click wrong, you end up calling him a toilet and he doesn’t like it.

The aliens say my name perfectly, only they add a little thumb flick on the end. I didn’t ask them what I would be called if they left out the thumb flick. Sometimes it’s better to not know things.

“Can I go now? I told H’raf I’ll meet him in the gym.”

“Yes, but just one more thing.” Dad ran his hand through his hair. He should really stop doing that—I think it’s what’s making him go bald. “Dr. Porter wanted me to ask you this.”

Dr. Porter is the chief language scientist on Alpha. He’s making a video dictionary of Alienese. I have to meet with him every few days and answer a gazillion questions. We don’t like each other. He thinks I’m badly behaved and too sassy. I think he’s the kind of adult that talks all fake-sweet to kids but doesn’t really like them.

Dad took out his phone and ran a video of H’raf’s mom saying something. She raised her ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted her thumb, and said, “pof,” very softly.

“Dad, I have no idea what that means.”

“Dr. Porter says it’s important. Could you ask H’raf?”

He still wasn’t pronouncing it right. This time he called H’raf a metal chair. I said, “Why doesn’t Dr. Porter ask H’raf himself?”

“He did. But the answer wasn’t clear. I don’t think H’raf likes Dr. Porter much.”

I grinned. Dad gave me a fake swat on the bottom, and I ran off to meet H’raf in the gym. We were going to program Luna, my robot dog, to do some new tricks. H’raf learned really fast to program human computers, but we can’t do anything with theirs. Mom says they use completely different physics. Then she said a whole lot of long words I didn’t understand, so I stopped listening.

Also, H’raf was going to bring his bic!dul, which is maybe the coolest toy in the whole universe. It looks like a green blob, but you talk to it and tell it what you want it to turn into, and it does. It can look like him, or me, or Luna, or a coffee pot, or the Dome—anything. We are only supposed to play with it when adults are around. Mom says that until she understands the science behind it, it could have “dangerous aspects.” But the bic!dul fits in H’raf’s pocket, and so sometimes we sneak into a storage closet to play with it. What’s dangerous about a green blob that turns into the shape of a coffee pot? It’s not like you can make hot coffee in it.

“C’mon, Luna! Let’s go!” She scampered after me as I ran along the smooth rock corridors to the gym. Alpha Colony is always growing; big machines bore through rock to make new tunnels and rooms. I was looking forward to having H’raf all to myself. Jillian and Ben both had to make up time they missed on the exercise machines—it’s important to exercise a lot, because if you don’t, the moon’s lower gravity turns your muscles to mush. I liked Jinfroh and B-b-b-jump!, but they didn’t approve of H’raf smuggling the bic!dul out of his quarters for us to play with. Jinfroh can be too big-sisterish sometimes. B-b-b-jump! is still sort of a baby.

I burst into the gym. H’raf was there, but I knew right away that something was wrong. He was making the pattern with his feet that meant he was upset. “Nia!” he said in English, but with the thumb twist on the end. “We must to go!”

“Go where?”

“We have trouble!”

I looked around the empty gym—I didn’t see any trouble.

“Not at Alpha,” H’raf said. “Trouble at home!”

“Home? You mean, your home? Your planet? You’re leaving?”

“Yes! Big trouble! We must to go today!”

“What trouble?” I asked. But when H’raf started to explain, I didn’t understand any of the words. All at once I got mad, which is what I do when I’m scared. Mom says it’s a bad habit. Dr. Porter says I’m undisciplined. I didn’t care. I said, “You can’t go! Make them leave you here!”

H’raf raised his right arm, which is sort of like us shaking our head no. “Can’t.”

“Will you be coming back? When?”

“I don’t know.”

Well, of course he didn’t know—nobody tells kids anything. They just order us around. Move to Earth, Nia. Leave your friends. Move back to Alpha, Nia. Make new friends. Now it would probably be: Move back to Earth, Nia. And this new friend leaves.

I shouted, “I’m sick and tired of good-byes!”

“Yes. Me. Also,” H’raf said. “I must to go now.” Then he leaned toward me and whispered, “Before I must to go, I give to Nia a present. Only not here.”

I knew immediately what he meant. We held hands—he has one more tentacle than I have fingers, but it doesn’t matter—and ran out of the gym, away from the security cameras. My phone was ringing wildly: Mom or Dad calling me. I ignored the phone. In the storage closet, H’raf pulled out the bic!dul. “Look, Nia.”

The green blob sat on his hand. He said to it, “H’raf.” The blob changed shape and in a minute there was a little green H’raf sitting on his palm. “To remember of me.”

“I would remember you anyway, H’raf. Forever.”

“Yes. I remember Nia for all time of all stars. But one more important, Nia. If this bic!dul makes trouble, you must to say this three turns.” H’raf raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted his thumb and said, “pof,” very softly, and then he said, “tarn!-dal!-jump.”

It started with the same words that Dad said Dr. Porter wanted to know, but then went on longer. I said in Alienese, “What does it mean?”

H’raf looked like he was searching his memory for the right words. He didn’t find them. The storage closet door flew open. I snatched the bic!dul from H’raf’s hand and shoved it in my pocket.

A security officer stood there, looking really mad. He wasn’t one of Alpha’s security team; he’d come up from Earth when the aliens first showed up. Serious security. He grabbed me by the arm but didn’t touch H’raf. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you hear your phone? Everybody’s looking for you two!”

“Let go! I’m coming!”

H’raf flicked both wrists upward and made a snorting noise in his nose. That all added up to a very bad word in Alienese. I couldn’t help it; I grinned at him.

It was my last smile for a long time.

There was a quick going-away ceremony under the Dome, and then the aliens were gone. I sat in our apartment with Mom and Dad. “What happened? Why did they have to go?”

“There is a crisis on one of their colony worlds,” Dad said. He ran his hand through his hair.

“One of their colony worlds? You mean they have a lot of colonies? How many?” We only have two: Alpha and the Mars colony. My friend Rosa’s family moved to Mars last year.

Mom said, “It’s not clear how many colonies they have.”

“Why not? Can’t they count? Can’t you count?”

“Nia,” Dad said, “don’t take that tone with your mother. I know you’re upset, but it’s not her fault.”

That was true. It didn’t make me feel any better. I said, “Everybody leaves! Or you make me leave them!”

Luna rushed up to me and whimpered. I programmed her to do that when I’m upset. She climbed into my lap.

Mom said, “Nia, you need to learn to accept things that you can’t control. Now I need to ask you something. Please think about it carefully. Those words that Dr. Porter asked you to have H’raf explain—”

“Angela,” Dad said, “maybe this isn’t the best time. She’s pretty upset.”

But there is no stopping Mom when anything scientific is involved. She barreled ahead. “I know. But this is really important. What did H’raf say?”

“I didn’t get a chance to ask him!”

There was a long silence. Finally Mom said, “Nia, we trusted you with this.”

It was too much. I said, “Well, I trusted you to not tell me to make friends with H’raf, and then when I do, to just care about what information I can get out of him! I’m not some sort of spy!”

Dad said, “Of course you’re not, honey,” at the same moment that Mom said, “Nia, nobody said anything about—”

“I don’t feel good,” I said and threw up on the kitchen floor.

Then everybody got concerned and put me to bed and got the doctor. It turned out I had the flu, which must have come up to Alpha with one of the new government people or security guys or scientists, because it wasn’t here before. Jillian and Ben got it, too, and a whole lot of other people, including Dr. Porter. Mom brought me chicken soup and put cold cloths on my head. Dad read me stories. They both forgave me for yelling at them because, after all, I had been coming down with the flu and wasn’t really myself. Sickness has some good points.

Too bad you have to feel so rotten to take advantage of them.

After a few days, the fever and achiness and throwing up stopped. I still felt yukky, though. Nothing was any fun. Jillian and Ben were still sick. Most of the people who came up to Alpha while the aliens were here had gone back down to Earth. I messaged with Kezia and Alice on Earth, but I couldn’t call H’raf because once the alien ship left, we couldn’t contact them. Dad says their spaceship isn’t in normal space, but I think their cell plan just has really poor coverage.

Luna and I went every day to the storage closet so I could play with the bic!dul that H’raf gave me. The bic!dul wasn’t H’raf, or anybody else I could play with. But H’raf made it for me, and so it was a piece of him, like a memory is a piece of somebody. I didn’t want a piece of H’raf, I wanted the whole alien. But this is what I got.

Then the storage closet got filled up with new supplies from Earth, big crates of something or other, and there was no room for us. So Luna and the bic!dul H’raf and I went down to a new bore tunnel.

I was not supposed to be there. The bore machinery is big and loud and dangerous. It works all the time, all by itself, cutting through rock to make new tunnels and new rooms. Then robot arms load the rock onto little train cars and take it up to the surface to dump. Other robots, which are mostly arms attached to weird-looking machines, smooth out the tunnel floors and put in lights and air ducts and stuff like that. The robots install security cameras, too, but this tunnel didn’t have them yet.

Which is why I went there.

I sat on the rough rock floor of the new tunnel and played with the bic!dul. “Be H’raf,” I told it in Alienese. The blob melted and then reformed into the shape of a little green H’raf.

“Be a phone.”

It did, although of course the phone didn’t work. But, then, neither did the green H’raf.

“Be a ball.”

The bic!dul became a ball and Luna barked at it. “Fetch, Luna!” I threw the ball down the tunnel, away from the bore machine. It bounced off the wall. Before Luna could grab it, a robot arm installing air ducts picked it up.

I jumped up, scraping my knee on the rough rock. “Give that back! It’s not an air duct, you stupid robot!”

The robot squashed the bic!dul flat—robots are really strong—and cemented it into the ceiling, which was what it was programmed to do, and reached down for another air duct.

“Give it back! It’s mine!”

The robot cemented a second air duct over the ball. I hit the robot, which did no good at all. Luna barked and jumped. My phone rang. Shouting and barks and phone chimes echoed off the stone walls.

“Nia,” Dad said, on audio override, “where are you? Come back to the apartment. Your mother is sick.”

Mom had the flu. She was sicker than I had been, but not dangerously sick. The doctor said so. Here’s what I didn’t know before: It’s not so bad to have someone in your family sick if you’re not. I got to help take care of Mom, which had never ever happened before because Mom was always the strong one. Now she wasn’t. I made her soup—Dad showed me how—and I put cold cloths on her forehead and I read to her, because it hurt her eyes to read. It cheered me up a lot, especially since Dad was often gone. There was something going on at the Moon Council. He’s not a member, but Mom is and he was filling in for her. So I took care of Mom—I was important!

And she didn’t once tell me to clean my room or stand up straighter or not be so impulsive. It was great.

Until she got better.

After lunch one day, she put on her glasses, blinked, and said to Dad, “Wayne, fill me in on the crisis.”

I looked up from carrying away the tray with her lunch dishes. Did she mean the crisis on the alien colony world? Was it over, and maybe H’raf was coming back?

But it wasn’t the aliens’ crisis. It was a crisis on Alpha. Dad glanced at me and ran his hand through his hair. “I haven’t wanted to worry Nia.”

Mom said, “Nia is old enough to understand. She’s learned a lot of self-control, and she’s been so mature during my illness.”

I put the tray down, looking mature and self-controlled and old enough to understand anything.

Dad said to Mom, “Haven’t you kept up with the Council bulletins?”

“Reading still gives me a headache, Wayne—tell us.”

Us. I looked even more mature. I did this by nodding seriously and sort of squinting up my eyes, like I was gazing at A Really Important Crisis.

Dad still looked uncertain. But he said, “Nia—do you know what disassemblers are?”

“No.” Six words into the crisis, and already I didn’t understand.

“Well—everything in the world is made up of atoms, right? The bed, the dishes, you and me—everything.”

“I know that.” Sometimes they treat me like I’m six.

“Do you know what an atom is made up of?”

“It’s got, uh, stuff in the middle and electrons go whizzing around the center.”

“Close enough. Have you ever heard of nanotechnology?”

It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I said, “Sort of.”

Mom said, “Nanotech is building up things atom by atom, kind of like the 3-D printer does, but on a more basic level. A nanotech machine could build anything out of the right materials.”

“Really?” I pictured a big box that could make anything: ice cream cones, cell phones, robot dogs like Luna. “Do we have one?”

“No. Human technology is only as far as 3-D printers.”

Too bad. Our 3-D printer was only programmed to make boring things like cups and socks and parts for other machines. I said, “But how is nanotechnology a crisis right now on Alpha?”

Dad said, “Nanotech builds things using tiny little machines called ‘assemblers.’”

“Because they assemble atoms,” I said, feeling smart.

“Right. But—”

All at once I got it. I jumped up, spilling the rest of the soup and water from Mom’s tray. “You said ‘disassemblers,’ not ‘assemblers’! Do disassemblers take things apart?”

“Yes. Atom by atom,” Mom said. Dad was wiping up the spills on the floor.

“And we have disassemblers on Alpha? That’s the crisis?”

“Yes.”

“But…what are the disassemblers taking apart atom by atom?”

Long silence. Then Mom said, “The moon.”

It wasn’t quite as bad as that—at least, not yet. The disassemblers were in only one spot and were so far taking apart only a few rocks. But—get this!—they were spreading. The disassemblers had assemblers with them, and the assemblers were making more disassemblers so that they could take apart more things! What kind of stupid idea is that? It’s like my bratty cousin Jason could make more and more Jasons until the whole world was filled with whining, bratty little cousins.

Nobody knew where the disassemblers came from. So far, they were in only one place on the moon. All the scientists were working to keep them there, and more scientists were coming up on shuttles from Earth. Pretty soon we might have as many scientists as atoms.

Dad and I were having cocoa at our tiny kitchen table when I asked him about the worst-case scenario. That’s the most terrible thing that can ever happen. I thought the worst-case scenario would be that the whole moon is dissembled, but Dad said no.

“We wouldn’t let it get that far. If necessary, the Moon-NASA Council will authorize blowing up part of Alpha Colony, using bombs big enough to destroy all the disassemblers.”

“Blow up how much of Alpha?”

“As much as necessary,” he said.

“Dad—how much?”

“A lot. But if that happens, we’ll already have been evacuated to Earth. We’ll be safe.”

“But Alpha Colony won’t! It will be blown up!”

“Nia, you really don’t have to worry about this. The Council will come up with a solution. Meanwhile, Dr. Porter wants to see you for another language session.”

I groaned. “I already told him all the Alienese I know! Jillian told him, and Ben told him, and he recorded everything, and anyway I don’t like him!”

“Why don’t you like him?”

That’s the sort of question Dad always asks. Mom would just have said, “I don’t care if you like him or not. You’re going.” I said, “He treats me like a baby. He even treats Jillian like a baby and she’s thirteen.”

Mom came into the kitchen, dressed for work. “Nia, don’t you have a language session with Dr. Porter?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” Dad said.

“I don’t like him,” I said.

Mom said, “I don’t care if you like him or not. This is important. You’re going.”

“Nia!” said Dr. Porter in his worst fake-syrupy voice. “How good of you to come! And only fifteen minutes late!”

Julia Liu, who operates the recording equipment, grinned at me. I don’t think she likes Dr. Porter, either.

He said, “Are you ready, dear? Don’t be nervous, now.”

“I’m not nervous.” Why would I be nervous? We’ve done this a gazillion times before.

“Fine. I want to talk about the alien-language phrase that has been giving us so much trouble.” Dr. Porter raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted his thumb, and said, “pof,” very softly.

“I already told you that I don’t know what it means.” I told him and told him!

“Ah, but we have made some progress with the phrase. We’ve studied every single occasion that anyone used it, and ‘clanth’ with the thumb twist seems to indicate a problem or trouble that hasn’t arrived yet. There are English phrases that people say to ward off bad luck—you have probably heard adults say some of them. “Knock on wood,’ or ‘God willing and the creek don’t rise’—have you ever heard those phrases, Nia?”

“No,” I said, although I had. His whole voice was fake-syrupy.

“They’re superstitious phrases, and most people don’t really think they’ll keep away problems, but the alien phrase might mean something like that.”

“What do the other parts of it mean?” I was getting sort of interested.

“We’re not sure, but raising the ring finger starts a lot of alien sentences and seems to have something to do with… not luck, exactly, not fate, not victory, but all three rolled together, and all influenced by some other untranslatable concept.”

Dr. Porter didn’t know what it meant. Clueless, but he didn’t want to say so. I said, “Uh huh.”

“Try again, dear,” he said, like he was telling a first-grader to color inside the lines. “What else can you remember about this phrase?”

“Nothing,” I said.

And then—in the middle of the night—I did remember. I remembered H’raf giving me the bic!dul. He handed me the green blob and said, “But one more important, Nia. If this bic!dul makes trouble, you must to say this three turns.” H’raf raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” and twisted his thumb, said, “pof,” very softly, and said….some other words. What words? I couldn’t remember. I’d been too upset about his going away.

If this bic!dul makes trouble….

No. It couldn’t be. No.

H’raf and I weren’t supposed to play with the bic!dul away from adults. He wasn’t supposed to give it to me as a going-away gift.

No.

How exactly did the bic!dul work? How did it change shape?

And what part of Alpha Colony was being disassembled?

Nooooooo…

I stumbled out of bed and put on my clothes, feeling around in the dark for my shoes. Luna was turned off, in the corner. I crept through the kitchen, unlocked the door, and ran as fast as I could through Alpha Colony’s tunnels. Security cameras were watching me, of course, but maybe I could get where I needed to go before anyone noticed.

Maybe a different part of Alpha was being disassembled. Oh, please, let it be a different part of Alpha….

It wasn’t. I got to where the new bore tunnel started, and there were barriers and computers and a lot of machines I didn’t recognize and three people, even though it was the middle of the night.

“Hey!” Security said. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“It was me!” I gasped. “I started the disassemblers! I threw the bic!dul and a construction robot cemented it into the ceiling and it started to disassemble atoms! It was me!”

They stared at me like I was a zombie about to eat their brains. “The bic!dul!” I screamed. “It was the bic!dul! Don’t any of you speak Alienese?”

None of them did. They were one Security and two scientists from Earth, maybe experts about things that were coming apart. Which, right then, included me.

One of the scientists, a man with a beard that really needed combing, said, “Who are you? How did you get here?”

“I live here! I’m Nia Philips, and I started all this!”

“Come with me, miss,” Security said, grabbing my arm. “You don’t belong here.”

“Wait,” Uncombed Beard said. “Philips? The Angela Philips that’s on the Moon-NASA Council?”

“That’s my mom. But don’t call her! I can fix this! We don’t need Mom.” She would ground me for 50 years. “Just let me go into the tunnel!”

They didn’t, of course. They called Mom. They called Dr. Porter to find out what “bic!dul” meant. They probably would have called every single person on Alpha if Mom and Dad hadn’t shown up, panting and in their bathrobes.

“Nia!” Dad said. “Are you all right?”

Mom said “What is going on here? Nia, what have you done now?”

How unfair! I said hotly, “I didn’t do it—the robot did! I’m trying to fix it!”

“Fix what?” Dad said, just as Dr. Porter came riding up on one of the little train cars that carries rocks away from the new tunnel. He was all crammed in and peeking over the top. That would have been funny if I could have laughed right then. Which I couldn’t.

I said, “I was playing with the bic!dul down here—you know, the green blob that can change shape. H’raf gave it to me. I threw it for Luna when it was a ball. A robot picked it up and cemented it into the ceiling all sort of smashed flat, and now I think it’s up there making new baby disassemblers and taking apart the moon!”

Total silence. You never heard such silence—more quiet than outer space, more quiet than death. Until I burst into tears.

Dad put his arm around me. Mom turned red, trying to hold in her anger. The scientists turned pale. It was Dr. Porter, who I don’t even like, who said the only sensible thing. It was so sensible that I didn’t even care that he said it all fake-sweet.

“Nia—think hard, dear. The bic!dul is controlled by voice, isn’t it? That’s how you make it change shape? Did H’raf tell you any words to say if the bic!dul malfunctioned?”

“Yes!” I sobbed. “But I can’t remember all of the words! And anyway, the bic!dul won’t listen to me because it’s all smashed flat by your stupid robot!” The robot wasn’t really Dr. Porter’s, but by that time, I didn’t care.

A pale scientist said, “There may be an intact central mechanism. Or each disassembler may have the capacity to respond to reprogramming. It’s alien tech—we just don’t know!”

Dr. Porter said, “What part of the words do you remember?”

“You know—the words about luck and problems! The ones we talked about!”

“And there were more words, as well.”

His voice was soothing; I stopped sobbing, as long as I didn’t look at Mom. She was going to ground me for a century. “Yes,” I said, “more words at the end, but I don’t remember them.”

“I know, dear. Listen to me. I’m going to say some words that we linguists have learned in Alienese, and I want you to tell me if any of them were what H’raf said to stop the bic!dul. Ready?”

“Y-yes.”

“Jelp click.”

“No, H’raf didn’t say that.”

“Kulpar with a wrist twist like this.”

“No.”

“Tarn.”

“Yes! What does it mean?”

“We aren’t sure. But it seems to have something to do with the way machinery operates in—”

“I remember!” I shouted. Dr. Porter’s questions squashed H’raf’s whole sentence back into my head, just like that stupid robot squashed the bic!dul into the tunnel ceiling. I raised my ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted my thumb, said, “pof,” very softly, and then, “tarn!-dal!-jump. You have to say the whole thing three times!”

Dr. Porter said to Security, “Did you record that?” She nodded. Dr. Porter went to the security screen, nodded, and told her to push aside the barrier in front of the tunnel. He stepped over the fallen rocks and stopped at the place where I said, “There.” Then he looked up at the ceiling, raised his ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted his thumb, said, “pof,” very softly and then, “tarn!-dal!-jump.” He did it three times.

And I laughed.

Everybody looked shocked and Mom said, “Nia!” But I couldn’t stop laughing—he looked so funny, and he was doing it all wrong, and Heaven knows what he actually said. I couldn’t stop laughing! Later, Dad told me that was just a response to tension, but I think it was because Dr. Porter—serious, solemn, fake-sweet Dr. Porter—was talking to a ceiling with commands it could never understand in a million years. He jumped wrong, he clicked with his tongue wrong, he said the words wrong.

Dad said quietly, “Nia—you do it. Go on.”

The scientist without a beard said, “I don’t think—”

“Yes,” Mom said, “Nia will have the right accent.”

“Really, Dr. Philips, there is no—”

“Yes,” Mom said, in her Council voice. The scientist didn’t argue anymore.

Dad went with me into the tunnel. What if it picked that minute to disassemble more, and rocks fell on us? But it didn’t. I turned my face toward the ceiling, raised my ring finger, said “clanth!” twisted my thumb, said, “pof,” very softly and then, “tarn!-dal!” while I jumped just right. Three times.

Nothing happened.

“It’s still disassembling!” I cried.

“Maybe not,” a scientist said, studying his computer screen. “It may take a minute for the embedded instruments to register any change….wait….yes. Fracture 16A is no longer widening!”

Nobody said anything else. The silence bit me, sort of like when you know there’s a mosquito sucking your blood but you can’t reach it to swat it away. I had to say something. So I said, “Can we get the bic!dul out of the cement so I can have it back to play with?”

Wrong thing to say.

So I saved Alpha Base. I stopped the moon from disassembling.

Of course, I also had started the moon disassembling. Mom didn’t forget that. She didn’t ground me for a century, but it felt that long. Also, I had to apologize to everybody in the known universe. Also, I had to write an essay on what I learned from this whole thing. I wrote that I learned three things:

• Never play with alien toys that you aren’t supposed to have.
• Language and accents really are learned better by kids than adults.
• If you have an alien friend who takes off for his people’s colony world, so that he can’t share in the blame for something he did just as much as you, don’t whine about it because you have to take responsibility for the part you did. That’s being mature.
• Don’t trust robots because they don’t get blamed for anything even when it’s their fault!

Mom made me take that last one out.

But it’s still true.