Out of This World (21 page)

Jenna laughed. “I guess you're right. Not unless you want to be a used-car salesman.”

Zachary smiled. “Or a con-artist.”

“Or a carnival pitchman.”

Zachary was about to continue when he felt an odd sensation in his brain. He had been certain that he didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle to figure out what was happening to them, or their parents. But suddenly he wasn’t so sure. For some strange reason there was something about the conversation they had had in their kitchen, just floating out of reach, that could help pull everything together.

He concentrated for all he was worth. What was it? What was the clue he needed?

He couldn't find it. It was like having an itch in his brain that he couldn't scratch.

Jenna sighed. “I keep telling myself not to think about home,” she said wistfully. “But I keep doing it anyway. I would give anything to have things back to normal. To sit at the kitchen table and eat one of Mom's terrible meals. To lose bets to you—even if I have to do your chores. And especially to listen to Mom and Dad tease you about growing up to be a used-car salesman.”

“Me too,” said Zachary wearily.

He paused and then cleared his throat. “About that bet,” he began. “After everything we've been through—not to mention that you keep saving my life—if we ever do get back, I release you from having to do my chores.”           

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

This news didn't really raise her spirits, but she tried to fake it a little for Zachary's benefit. “Great,” she said flatly, unable to manage any enthusiasm. “Then what are we waiting for? Let's find Mom and Dad and get home.”

Zachary nodded. He tried to force a smile, but failed. The danger just kept coming. And there was very little sign that they were making any progress in learning what was going on, or had any chance of finding their parents.

But once again, he had a strange feeling that the answer was very close, although at the moment, just beyond his reach. What was the clue? He strained. He willed it to come closer. He could almost reach out and touch it.

“Zack,” said Jenna excitedly, interrupting his thoughts. “Look.”

There was the familiar shimmer of a portal directly in front of them.

They walked over to it and looked down. And saw . . . nothing.

“Just great,” complained Jenna. They had seen an arctic world, a desert world, and a cave world. To what type of world would this portal lead them? They could be in for quite a nasty surprise.

“We might as well take it,” said Zachary unhappily. “What else are we going to do? Staying on this island won’t help us. We already know that Mom and Dad weren’t here.”

Jenna reluctantly agreed.

They held hands and closed their eyes. “One, two, three,” they yelled as they jumped through.

They opened their eyes.
What now
?

They were on a gently sloping plateau, high up in a magnificent mountain range. The mountains were covered by a blanket of short grass; grass that covered every inch of every mountain and looked to be at the exact same height everywhere. A green on a golf course couldn’t have been more uniform.

A few tall, skinny trees dotted the landscape around them. The trees each had six giant leaves, thirty or so feet above the ground, that were smooth and unbroken, as if they were made of plastic. The leaves were deep blue in color and were enormous. At least six feet long and three feet wide. Far down below, at the base of the mountain, was a thick woods.

Given that they hadn’t been able to see through the portal, they had been lucky. They could have landed somewhere far worse.

“I guess we should head to the bottom,” suggested Zachary. “Ahhhhh,” he yelled as he tried to take the first step and slipped, sliding for about ten feet before he could stop himself. “Be careful,” he warned. “This grass is really slippery.”

Jenna nodded and carefully joined him. When she reached him he was staring into the sky like a zombie. She followed his line of sight. A giant, prehistoric looking bird-thing was flying menacingly through the air hundreds of yards away. It was scaly like a lizard and as long as a bus, with the wingspan of a small plane. It had wicked talons large enough to easily grip a grown man.

“Now I know what a worm must feel like when it sees a bird,” said Jenna, as the prehistoric flying reptile flew out of site over the horizon. “If one of those things flies in this direction, we’re in big trouble.”

Zachary ignored her. His head was tilted back and he was deep in thought.

 Jenna surveyed the area once more. “I think I know what we need to do. We need to get to the base of this mountain and into the woods. Those Pterodactyl-things can't fly in the woods, so we'll be safe. The grass is as slippery as snow and grows all the way to the bottom. So if we can think of a way to get one of those huge leaves from the tree over there, we can use it as a sled.”

Zachary didn't even hear her. The answer to everything they had been through was finally coming into focus. He strained with all of his might.

Bingo.

Finally—
finally.
The puzzle clicked into place in Zachary's mind.

He had an answer. It had to be right. It was the only answer that could possibly explain everything that had happened to them.

Zachary finally broke out of his trance. He turned to his sister, his eyes wide. “Jenna, he said. “I’ve finally figured it out.”

“Figured
what
out?” said Jenna.

Zachary stared at her intently. “Everything,” he said simply.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Solution

“The portals, the dangers . . . all of this,” said Zachary. “None of it is real. We’re just pawns in a chess game. The subjects of some kind of experiment.”

Jenna’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “An experiment?” she repeated.

Zachary nodded. “Just before we left the island I had a feeling I was getting close to a solution. When we were talking about the night we left home. About my scams and how Mom and Dad teased me at dinner. Teased me about becoming a used-car salesman, or a con-man, or a carnival pitchman. But there was one more item on that list. Do you remember what else they said I might be good at?”

Jenna tried to replay the conversation in her mind. “They said you would also make a good lab rat,” she whispered.

“Exactly.
A lab rat
. Part of my mind knew something about that conversation was important. And when I remembered the lab rat part, I knew that this was the answer. Someone is putting us through a maze—testing us. We’re lab rats in someone’s experiment. What we’re going through just isn’t possible in the
real
universe. We’ve talked about how incredibly bad our luck has been. How deadly dangers find us almost immediately after we come to each new world. Every single time.” He shook his head. “It’s impossible for anyone to be
that
unlucky.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s also impossible to go through a portal in our kitchen and end up on other worlds. You can’t jump to the conclusion this is some kind of test just based on that.”

“Yes I can. Because
luck
has nothing to do with any of this. We’ve been forced to face these dangers
on purpose
. But if you think about it, even though the dangers keep coming, we always have the chance to figure out a way to survive them. I mean, if we landed on a planet the size of Jupiter we’d be dead instantly. Or if the Mesrobians had just killed us on sight, there’d be nothing we could’ve done about it. But in each case there was a single way out—and we were being tested to see if we could find it.”

Jenna thought about what he said for several long seconds, but still wasn’t convinced.

“On Orum,” continued Zachary, “what are the chances the ping-pong ball would fall into that little hole? What are the chances that a hole would even be there? One in a million? One in a
billion
? We were being tested. You didn’t fumble the ping-pong ball. The testers caused it to fall and roll into the hole. And they chose to use ping-pong balls for a good reason: because we know they float. And there just happened to be a well nearby filled with water. Leaving us with one way out, if we could pass the test and find it.”

Jenna considered. He did have a point. The ridiculously low overpass that was impossible for their car to pass through, unless they deflated the tires, was like this as well. And they had saved Tular within minutes of reaching his world. If they hadn’t had an expert helping them, they wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes there. A Harpoon Tulip or Swordbird or something else would have killed them.

The only way Tular would have trusted them enough to help them is if they saved his life. It did make a strange kind of sense if they were being tested. To pass they had to choose to save Tular and find a way to do it. She mentioned this to her brother.

Zachary nodded. “And the Grull were so rare that Tular had never seen one before. What are the chances that he would be attacked by one right when we were about to go through the portal? Thinking back, it’s as if someone wanted to see what we would do. Would we go through? Or would we create a diversion so we could save Tular and his clan?”

“And even beyond that,” added Jenna, “would
you
go through and leave your sister behind? Or would you stay with her to face the deadly and horrible Grull?” Jenna shook her head. “If you
are
right, someone sure knows how to make a tough test, that’s for sure.”

Jenna paused in thought for several seconds, and realized there was a major flaw in her brother’s reasoning. “But then what’s with Mom and Dad? Why did they disappear? And why did they insist we not come after them?”

“I think the bird’s message was a fake,” said Zachary. “I mean, how did the bird possibly find us, anyway? I think it was just the first part of the test. The bird’s message made it clear that Mom and Dad were in big trouble. And the testers made sure we knew that time was racing by for them, so we would realize we couldn’t wait for outside help. The experimenters wanted to see if we would disobey our parents and risk our lives to try to save them, not knowing what we would be facing; only that it would be incredibly dangerous.”

“If that’s true, then I probably didn’t really see Mom and Dad in the cave, either,” noted Jenna.

It had been odd that the portal had been two-way for sight, but only one-way for sound. She could hear her parents, but they couldn’t hear her, or answer any of her questions. And why did they insist she jump through to
them
? Not knowing where Zachary was, they would never have abandoned him. They would have insisted on jumping through to her.

Zachary nodded. “I think Mom and Dad’s appearance in the cave—or
supposed
appearance—was just another test. The experimenters were tempting you. They wanted to see what you would do. Would you jump into the arms of your parents? Or would you stay trapped in a cave, blind and helpless, and try to save your brother from a tentacled monster? Knowing that you had almost no chance.”

“So you think some tester in a lab-coat was just watching us the whole time as we moved from world to world. Taking notes.”

“Right,” agreed Zachary. “Using Mom and Dad as the lure to keep us moving.”

They remained silent for several long seconds, lost in thought.

“But why?” said Jenna. “And
who
?”

Zachary blew out a long breath. “Hirth and Wyland, that’s who. Our see-through friends from Orum. I’m almost certain.”

“Based on what?” asked Jenna.

“Remember just before we drove off and left them, Hirth said we would never find Mom and Dad. I told him we would. Do you remember what he said then?”

Jenna searched her memory. “Something about us being stupid and not having any chance.”

Zachary shook his head. “No. I remember it exactly. He said we would ‘flunk miserably.’ He used the word ‘flunk’ Jenna. Remember, he and Wyland were very precise with their words. He could have said ‘fail’ but he said ‘flunk’. And flunk is a word you only use when talking about a test.”

“I don’t know Zack. You’ve decided they’re behind this based on a single
word
? Maybe you’re just not remembering right.”

“I’m remembering right,” he insisted. “But there’s more. I didn’t tell you about it because I thought I’d imagined it.” He paused. “Right before you rescued me in the cave, I took out the language transformer Hirth had given me, and tried my hardest to see it. I couldn’t. But for just a second, I could see
myself
, and Nivek, from
above
. Clear as day. And not with my eyes, but with my
mind
.”

Jenna’s face wrinkled up in confusion. “I don’t get it?”

Zachary was about to respond when one of the giant, leathery-winged prehistoric monsters swooped down out of nowhere. It flew toward them with alarming speed.

“Split up!” yelled Zachary as he moved away from his sister, making the creature choose between targets.

The monster swooped down toward Zachary, its powerful talons extended. Zachary dived to the ground and flattened out, causing the creature to miss him by inches.

The creature flew off hundreds of yards distant and began making a huge, lazy circle to come around for another attempt. It had sized them up and knew that it had all the time in the world. They were slow and completely out in the open. Easy prey.

Zachary stood to his full height. “Jenna, I need to finish,” he said hurriedly. “What I saw in the cave—I’ve figured out what it means. That crystal Hirth gave us isn’t just a language transformer. It’s also a sort of spy camera. Somehow, Hirth and Wyland are using it to keep track of us. If you’re going to run rats through a maze, you have to have some way to watch them. Somehow, I was able to tap into it in the cave. For just an instant. I thought I’d imagined it, but when I figured out the rest, it suddenly made perfect sense.”

Jenna had barely listened to him, having rushed over to one of the trees with the giant, plastic-looking leaves. “Zack!” she screamed. “Come on. We need to figure out how to get one of these leaves so we can sled down the mountain and hide from this thing.
Come on!
”