Loop (7 page)

THE LONELY PLANET GUIDE TO INTER-DIMENSIONAL TRAVEL

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

Winston Churcmll

SMS

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‘What the …?'

I was staring at the mobile with a frown. What I was reading made even less sense than things related to Chad usually make. And I'm pretty used to things not making a whole lot of sense when they have anything remotely to do with my devo big brother.

‘You've got to stop squinting like that, Sarah,' my mother said, sneaking up behind me with a washing basket full of damp football jerseys. ‘It's unladylike.'

She's immune to ‘searing looks', of course, but I shot her one anyway. On principle.

‘What do you make of this?' I asked, moving across to the washing line and shoving the mobile under her nose.

‘Very nice, dear. Is it new?'

‘Not the
phone,
Mother. The
message.
Can you understand it?'

She looked down, squinting the way she'd just told me not to. ‘All this text messaging stuff,' she complained. ‘How you kids can make any sense of it, I don't know.'

‘That's the point. I
can't
make any sense of it. Chad was in the shower and his phone rang, but when I checked the message, all I got was —'

‘What are you doing reading Chad's messages?'

‘Hello? I'm his sister. I'm supposed to be doing things like that. It's expected.'

She shook her head, giving her best
what-did-I-ever-do-to-deserve-this
? performance. She even rolled her eyes, shook her head and did the big breath-intake, like one of those prom-queen mega-bitches in a third-rate teen comedy. I nearly pointed out that the Oscars weren't on for another six months, but I was about three seconds away from having to help her hang out the washing, so I chose discretion over valour.

‘Maybe it's a code,' I muttered to myself, as I carried the phone back inside the house.

‘Touch my phone again and I'll … I'll …'

Chad always has trouble threatening me. It's easy to threaten other boys. Boys understand threats. But girls, especially younger sisters, even if they are fifty IQ points smarter, at least twice as athletic and only one year younger …

Okay, it isn't fair. But who said life was supposed to be fair?

Especially for big brothers.

I think there must be a statute somewhere that gives younger sisters the sovereign right to do things to their brothers that no boy would dare to. Because when you're sixteen and basically decent, and you'd never dream of doing anything remotely
in
decent to get even with them, you're basically … well, basically, you're stuffed.

Chad would go to threaten me, then realise there was really nothing he could threaten me
with,
so he'd end up standing there like a goose saying, ‘Touch my phone again and I'll … I'll …' and coming up with nothing.

‘And you'll what?'

I stood there with my hands on my hips for a three-count, showing absolutely no fear. Three is the ideal number. Any less doesn't have the desired effect; any longer and you enter the realm of diminishing returns.

Then I skipped out of the room, tossing the phone onto the bed as I went.

Chad was always football mad. Well, from the time he was twelve years old, at least. That was when the entire Parramatta first-grade team had come to train on the school oval as a publicity stunt and they'd let him do the ‘ball-boy' thing.

He's big for his age. Which is the reason he ended up playing front-row, even though he really wanted to play half-back.

‘Not that it matters,' I used to point out. ‘When you play for the worst team in the history of the sport, it really makes no difference
where
you play. Full-back, right-wing … or
left right out!'

The Stranglers. Amil Chopra had thought up the name.

Amil didn't play rugby. He played badminton – really badly too.

Amil reckoned watching the team run around getting beaten was funny. So funny that everyone on the sideline was choking with laughter.

Choking … The Stranglers …

Okay, Amil had a lousy sense of humour, but somehow the name had stuck. And now they wore it like a badge of shame.

At the Glass Factory

As soon as Sarah leaves the room, Chad picks up the phone, twists the stubby antenna three turns to the right, then two to the left, and presses the zero.

The screen turns bright red, which makes him blink as he reads the message:

MEETNG ARRANGD
B AT ASSMBLY POINT
AT 0200 WTH OTHERS
SHP LEAVES 0205
WILL NOT WAIT

He looks down at the phone and thinks of Xzaltar, and a smile sneaks slowly over his face.

At one-thirty in the morning, Sarah hears footsteps outside her room. Then Chad stubs his toe on the cupboard at the top of the stairs, and the next few seconds consist of a whispered monologue which could have been lifted directly from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The swearing gradually recedes until finally the front door clicks closed. From her bedroom window Sarah watches him sneaking out of the front gate, then turning left, which can mean only one thing
–
Sam Greenberg.

Chad and Sam have been friends since the second day of primary school. Sam is in the Stranglers because no other team would let him play – the same reason most of the boys are in the team.

Sam's dad coaches the team
–
or tries to. It isn't easy.

As she watches her brother disappearing around the corner, she can't let an opportunity like this slip by. She dresses quickly and takes the stairs two at a time, silent in her padded sports socks.

Closing the front door quietly, she slips on her sneakers and moves out into the cold night air, watching her breath steam out in front of her as she breaks into a jog.

Inside the old glass factory, the shadows cling around the walls as if they, too, are nervous.

A hesitant beam of moonlight struggles through the murky skylight in the high roof, falling like a pale spotlight in the centre of the vast open space and making it seem somehow colder. A few candles cast flickering spots of illumination into the gloom of the huge structure, but their feeble light fails to make it above shoulder height, and only serves to give the solid shadows a more sinister presence.

Sarah watches through the window as the boys begin to arrive. Chad and Sam and the Jackson brothers, Danny and Pete, stand by the wall. Perry Richards is throwing a tennis ball up in the air and trying to catch it as it falls back down out of the darkness. Snitch and Sunil are laughing quietly about something – which probably has something do with some lame computer game.

The others arrive in ones and twos from all directions, until finally the whole team is assembled.

Fifteen boys without an ounce of athletic talent between them. Fifteen boys who are tired of being called losers.

The Lonely Planet Guide

I watched them through the filthy glass of the window, trying to figure out what they were planning. The old factory was huge and empty, and the space where they were standing was big enough for playing a game of football – or landing a good-sized spaceship.

Which is exactly what Xzaltar did.

Standing on the windowsill to get a better view, I watched the boys spreading out around the walls.

What are you up to?

The thought had barely formed when suddenly the air began to ripple, then glow red, then a huge silver egg appeared out of nowhere.

In less than a second it was hovering there in the middle of the factory, hissing and gurgling like a pot of boiling porridge, while the boys just stood there watching it, like it was the most natural thing in the world to watch a spaceship appear out of thin air.

Then the hatch slid open and Xzaltar stepped out.

He was pretty impressive. Two hundred centimetres tall and dressed in a shimmering silver cloud.

He gave Chad a wave. Chad waved back.

‘Óffleing œ›ëlhgl. Blick!' said Xzaltar.

And Chad replied, ‘Óffleing œ›ëlhgl. Schleck!'

And I fell in through the window and banged my head on the floor.

‘It's not as crazy as you think,' Chad explained, as he helped me to my feet. I was a bit dazed, but I'm not entirely sure it was from the fall.

‘This is Xzaltar,' he went on. ‘We saved him when his spaceship crashed on the oval while we were training. Mr Greenberg had left early, and there was no one there but us.'

‘Anyway, we hid him in Pete and Danny's garden shed,' Sam added, ‘until he could phone home and get a lift back to Hraltixtz.'

‘Which is where he's from,' Sunil put in, a little redundantly.

‘He was very grateful,' Pete added.

It was surreal. I was getting the whole story in small bite-sized pieces – and it still didn't make any sense. I was too busy reprogramming my hard-drive so that I could process the idea of my brother and his team-mates starring in a Steven Spielberg re-make.

‘He promised to come back and reward us,' Danny finished, as if he was recalling how they'd returned some old woman's missing purse.

‘Sssnot ssrewardsss,' Xzaltar cut in, sounding like a cross between a leaking kettle and the snake in the Disney version of
Robin Hood.
‘Ssjustsss a sssthank yousss.' Then he shook his head and fiddled with a knob on the side of it. ‘Stupid translator. It got shaken up in the crash and I haven't had it fixed yet.'

‘The scientists on Hraltixtz are the most brilliant in this part of the universe,' Chad went on. ‘Xzaltar told them about our problem, and they say they have the solution.'

‘What problem?' I asked, still confused. Then I noticed that Sam was looking at me and frowning.

‘What are we going to do with
her?'
he asked. ‘It was supposed to be a secret.' He looked towards Xzaltar. ‘Don't you have something you can zap her with, to make her forget the whole thing?'

But Xzaltar shook his head.

‘We do, but I don't think you'd want us to use it. It has some rather … unfortunate side-effects on carbon-based life-forms. I think we should take her with us.' He paused and looked at me. His gaze was piercing, and I had the feeling that he was reading more than just my facial expression. ‘Perhaps she will learn enough to keep your secret.'

I looked up at the spaceship.

‘Like you could keep me off!' I said, stepping inside.

The others followed.

The thing about inter-dimensional travel is that it doesn't take any time at all. One second Xzaltar was saying ‘sssHeresss sswe gosss' and the very same second he was saying ‘sssHeresss sswe aresss'. Then the hatch was sliding open and we were stepping out onto the soil of Hraltixtz, which looked exactly like the soil on Earth, except that it was purple and the worms crawled along the surface. Two suns shone down from a beautiful violet sky.

It was a little scary.

But the boys weren't scared. They were excited.

‘Why are they so excited?' I asked, watching as Hraltixtzian scientists, dressed in white clouds, led them away.

Xzaltar fiddled with the knob on his head again. ‘The scientists of Hraltixtz invented the auto-trainer especially for creatures with poor motor skills. In twenty-four Earth hours, it can turn a … how do you say it? a wimp, into … well, someone who can hold their head up with pride – in any company.'

‘Does it work for girls too?' I asked.

Xzaltar smiled. ‘Of course. Follow me.'

The disappointing thing about the auto-trainer is that you don't remember the training.

‘Which is just as well,' Xzaltar explained twenty-four Earth hours later, as we were lining up ready to go home. ‘The machine stretches, separates and reconstitutes every fibre of every muscle in your entire body. If you weren't asleep during training, the pain would make your eyes explode.'

After that, no one asked any more questions about the technology.

‘Why can't we stay for a while?' I asked. ‘To look around.'

‘Inter-dimensional timing,' Xzaltar replied. ‘If we leave now, we will get back at exactly the moment we left. If we delay, you will arrive home three hundred years in the future.'

Which might make an important note for any future inter-dimensional edition of
Lonely Planet.

‘Here we go,' Xzaltar announced. ‘Here we are.'

And the trip was over.

After a few goodbyes Xzaltar returned to the ship.

‘Farewell, young people,' he said, as the hatch slid shut. ‘And remember, be kind to them.'

Game day

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A week later Sarah picks up Chad's mobile, twists the stubby antenna three turns to the right, then two to the left, and presses the zero.

The screen turns bright red, which makes her blink as she reads the message:

GREETNGS EARTH FRIENDS
GD FORTUNE IN
TH GAME 2DAY
RMEMBER
B KIND
XZALTAR

‘Be kind,' she whispers. Then she smiles.

‘I've been working on a new game plan,' Mr Greenberg explains.

It is five minutes to kick-off, and Mr Greenberg begins scribbling lines and circles on his tiny blackboard to explain the moves, in the hope that it makes him look like a real coach.

When he finishes, Sam puts an arm around him.

‘You're a great coach, Dad,' he says. ‘And I just want you to know that all the training is about to pay off'

Mr Greenberg feels a prick of pride as he watches his players run onto the field. But he doesn't hold out much hope. Most weeks, the game is over by half-time.