He Laughed With His Other Mouths by M. T. Anderson
“Makes sense to me,” said Busby Spence.
“Want to do something else?” said Harmon, tossing down his Jasper Dash book.
“Gee, okay,” said Busby Spence. “What are the other guys doing?”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s today?”
“Sunday.”
“They’re stealing scrap. From the high school’s scrap heap. So they can put it on the junior high’s scrap heap. And we can have more scrap for the war. I think we win a prize. A letter from the governor or something.”
Both boys thought about this. Stealing scrap didn’t sound very fun.
“You know what?” said Harmon. “Forget I ever said anything. Let’s read.”
They sat in the second tree house and listened to the rustling of the leaves and the burping of contented raccoons. Across town, boys lugged rusted bumpers and old tires across vacant lots.
Grasshoppers fled before them through the tall, dry grass.
RECIPE FOR DISASTER
Jasper Dash sat surrounded by a web of metal wires, waiting for his electro-execution.
“I do not think this is very fair,” he told the sparks who watched around him.
No, it won’t be fair, they replied. But it will be tasty.
Jasper pouted, but secretly, his brain was working at full power to try to figure a way out of this fix. He could tell there was no way to talk these hungry sparks into letting him go. They were too vain and selfish. Somehow, he had to think of a way to escape.
He looked up through the metal strands at the violet heavens. The scene would have been beautiful, if jagged, lightning-like death hadn’t been threatening to end the afternoon with a loud, crispy jolt.
Then Jasper had an idea.
He called out, “I wonder whether you fellows would at least let me eat my last meal.”
Go ahead, said one of the sparks. We’ll cook it for you.
There was a sizzle of laughter around him.
“That won’t be necessary, fellows,” said Jasper, rummaging around in his backpack.
His food wasn’t fancy, but it would be fine for the occasion.I He brought out another tube of sandwich, a few squirts of french fries, his saltshaker, and some water.
With dignity, he drank a sandwich.
He shook a few dehydrated water pills into a metal saucepan and added water. They made even more water.
There was a lot of buzzing in the lines around him.
Don’t mind us, said the citizens of the Second Wire City. We’re just deciding who gets the left lobe of your brain and who gets the right lobe.
Jasper nodded. He went about his cookery.
He prized off the lid of the saltshaker and poured all the salt into the saucepan of water. He stirred it around with the finger of his space suit.
Will you think really hard when we’re eating your brain waves? the sparks asked. It might make them juicier.
Jasper finished stirring the salt into the water. He tapped his finger on the rim of the saucepan. Then he stood up.
“Swell,” he said. “Now that I’ve eaten, I will thank all you fellows if you let me go on my way.”
Fat chance! said the sparks. Nothing doing!
You’re our community supper! Everyone’s coming!
“You should let me go,” said Jasper. “Otherwise, there will be a big disaster.”
You want a big disaster? said the sparks. Maybe it’s time for you to say your good-byes.
“I’ll say my good-byes,” said Jasper with dignity. He looked around at the live wires and bid them, “Good-bye.”
The sparks surged. They were about to jump the half inch through the air to kill Jasper!
They revved up.
Blue shot along the wires.
Thousands of volts zapped toward the Boy Technonaut—
And at that instant, he tossed the pan of water onto the big knot of wires. Salt water went everywhere!
There was a loud, bright KRAK! BVVVVVT! KRAK! POW!
There was a universal sizzle!
Jasper Dash had shorted out the Second Wire City.
Then everything around him was silent.
Off in distant parts of the city, there was the screaming of energy beings who’d just figured out what had happened.
Jasper made his escape. He rolled and jumped and tumbled through the net of wires. Now no one tried to electrocute him as he fled from the web.
He landed on his feet outside the Second Wire City. He backed away before they recovered.
“I mixed salt and water,” he shouted back to them. “Salt and water together make an excellent conductor of electricity. So I overloaded the wires near your town square. Next time, don’t try to eat other living, talking beings! Because honesty and hospitality always triumph over cannibalism!”
He turned on his heel and marched away from the energy people of the Second Wire City.
For a while, he heard their little electrical voices thrumming behind him: Come back! Come back!
We just want to give you a massage!
We’ll recharge your ray gun for you!
We’ll light up the whole city for you! We know disco!
But he didn’t listen.
Because after a few steps, he’d looked over toward the antenna where he’d first arrived on the planet.
And he saw that someone was headed right toward it. Someone in a flying car, shooting over the mountains.
Someone, finally, had come to meet him.II
* * *
I Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, did not need anything fancy to eat. He had made it through the final years of the Great Depression, when there wasn’t very much food, and the Second World War, when food was rationed by the government so there was enough for the troops fighting overseas.
Busby Spence, longtime reader of Jasper Dash novels, knew that rationing was important so that soldiers like his father could eat—but still, he didn’t like it. Almost immediately when America entered the war, sugar was rationed. Soon there was no candy left in the store near Busby Spence’s house, and there would not be candy for sale there again for years. After a few months, a lot of other things went on the rationed list too: a lot of meats, even butter . . . almost everything that made food good. He stared at his plate as everything got more and more tasteless and pale. He was often still hungry after dinner.
At that point, Busby Spence convinced his mother to buy Jasper Dash’s Victory Spread, a dark, sticky, weird-tasting thing you put on bread. No one really knew what was in it. The label said, in big, cheerful letters,
DON’T ASK! JUST OPEN YOUR JAWS WIDE!
EACH JAR OF VICTORY SPREAD IS MADE WITH
This was not strictly true. Unless “victory” usually means suet, ground carrot, grass clippings, and whipped pork fat.
II On the other hand, Busby Spence, Jasper Dash’s biggest fan, waited for months and months—and even years—to throw a welcome home party. It was going to be for his father, who was off in the Pacific. Busby Spence and his mother got a note from Busby’s dad saying that he was going to be sent home for a couple of weeks before he was sent into action on a different island.
They prepared everything for his arrival. They cleaned the sofa and beat all the rugs to get the dust out of them. Busby raked the leaves so the lawn would look good.
Then, two days before Busby’s father was supposed to arrive, he called, saying he wouldn’t be coming. His unit was sending him off to a radio training session instead. He told them he would not be making it back to the East Coast.
Busby’s mother slammed down the phone without saying good-bye. Then she immediately started crying and wanted to call him back. She didn’t know the number, though. He was at a pay phone.
A few days later a package arrived from Busby’s dad. Inside it was a metal statue of a god in some robes, and a note that said, “To my two favorite people. Here’s a god of good luck I found where we were just fighting. He has to apologize in person for me
Busby’s mother was happy to get the letter. She put the little statue of the god on the windowsill at the top of the stairs. She smiled at it and patted its head whenever she walked by.
Busby sized up the statue after brushing his teeth. In a Jasper Dash book, any worthwhile statue of a god sent from a distant tropical island would be cursed, and it would come alive at night and try to kill him and his mom. Or at least people would think it was cursed, until Jasper Dash discovered that the statue was actually a radio receiver that was sending messages to the enemy.
Busby Spence picked up the statue and shook it.
This stupid statue was no secret radio. He couldn’t use it to talk to anyone. No one could use it to say anything to him. No secret messages were coming from anywhere.
Busby’s mother left the statue there at the top of the stairs. It looked down on all their comings and goings.
Busby used it to play ringtoss with the lid from a canning jar.
THIS TIME, WITH FLARE
Jasper rushed across the green, glassy hills, waving his arms and leaping.
Here he had come fifteen hundred light-years—and he might miss the person who was coming to meet him!
He jumped up and down, almost yelping with the effort.
But he was a tiny dot on a huge landscape. The flying car slid through valleys toward the distant antenna.
Jasper started running toward it as fast as he could.
He knew there was no way he would make it there in time.
“By the Greater Magellanic Cloud!” he brayed.
He grabbed his ray gun out of its holster. He held it straight up and fired several bolts of light into the sky. They were not bright: The electrical people had sapped the gun’s energy.
The aircar was still headed away from him.
Desperately, he fired a final few shots—killing the batteries.
He watched across the huge gulf as the aircar quivered in the sky. He longed for it to turn around and come to him. It was time for his party. Time for his cake. Time to find out what his whole life was about.
. . . And the aircar turned. Someone had seen him. The flying ship zipped across the chasms and canyons and made its way straight for him.
Jasper didn’t know how to contain his happiness. He hopped up and down and waved again.
It might be his father in that aircar!
It settled down near him, kicking up a fine green dust.
A door on the side slid open.
Jasper Dash happily stuck his ray gun back in its holster.I
He waited to see who would come out of the dark portal.
But what came out was not exactly a “who.”
* * *
I Busby Spence wished he had a ray gun like Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut’s. He wanted to be able to point it at battalions of tanks or enemy ships and, with a huge blue bolt of anger, make them all disappear. When he went to the movies and they played a newsreel before the show, he watched the scenes of battle—the eruptions in the water; the white wisps of tracer bullets in the air; the dull gray landscapes flowing beneath planes, blossoming with blasts; the dark antitank guns lifting up and rearing back—and Busby imagined himself there with his ray cannon, squinting his eyes cruelly and making the whole terrifying Nazi Wehrmacht disappear in a burst of light.
Of course, when he thought about it, he realized Jasper Dash’s ray gun ran out of batteries too frequently. For this reason, he decided he preferred Captain Galactic’s sonic blaster, even though Captain Galactic wore dumb boots.
Once, when he and his mother were sitting in the movie theater, waiting for a new episode of Captain Galactic, the newsreel showed some of the fighting in the Pacific. There was a picture of a tropical island. The tide was coming in, and the bodies of dead American soldiers were floating facedown in the water.
Busby Spence’s mother got up and yanked Busby up the aisle and out of the theater. They missed the movie.
That was the episode of Captain Galactic where they finally reached the castle of Drong, Slayer of Worlds. Busby Spence never forgave his mother for making him miss it.
FAMILY REUNION
It was a huge lump of human parts: legs, arms, men’s eyes, women’s eyes, many mouths (some with mustaches), and ears like shelf fungi on trees.
It paused on the top step of the aircar, looking down at Jasper Dash. Various eyes looked him up and down, from his space-suited head to his magnetic boots. It blinked at him.
Then it bumbled its way down to the ground.
It said, “You are, perhaps, from Earth?”
“I’m Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut.” Jasper stuck his hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
The creature looked around. “Ah! Which hand would you like to shake? It’s a very special day, Jasper Dash, and I want you to have anything your heart desires.”
Jasper looked at the selection: hairy arms and muscly arms and weak arms and trick arms. “Gosh, I think I’ll choose that one, sir!” he said.
He shook hands with a good, middle-of-the-road arm.
“Jasper Dash! If it isn’t Jasper Dash! It’s a pleasure to meet you finally!” said the creature. “I am the Dirrillill.”
“Was it you who set up that swell party for me?”
“It certainly was, Jasper. That was me! I baked that cake with my own hands. These three.”
“Gee, it sure was nice of you to bake a cake to welcome me to the region of the Horsehead Nebula!”
“We try to welcome everyone to the region of the Horsehead Nebula.”
“And you must be the one who sent that beam of information about me to Earth?”
The Dirrillill thought about this for a second. Then a mouth said, “Of course! Of course! Yes, it was a while ago, back when there were a few more Dirrillillim around. But I am sure that I remember sending the beam of information about you to the planet Earth. Yes, absolutely! How could it slip my mind? It was, now that I think of it, the happiest day of my life!” He sighed. “It has been very difficult here. All the final few Dirrillillim, my friends and colleagues—they have all died in the last fifty years—tragic, very tragic. I am now the only Dirrillill left. It is very lonely. I have not been able to follow up on all my interstellar friendships the way I hoped to. So I am delighted that you are here! We shall have a grand time!”
“You’ll show me the sights?”
“All of them. Of course, of course! Right after we go back to your home planet, and you can show me the sights there! Aren’t you excited? Hop in the flying car, Jasper Dash.”
The Dirrillill could not have seemed nicer. But, see, because you and I have read other chapters, we know that this staggering blob of bits and bobs was two-faced, and not just because he had at least two faces. We know to listen for a dangerous, growling edge to everything the Dirrillill said. We know what peril Jasper put himself in by jumping happily into the creature’s flying jalopy.
But Jasper wasn’t really thinking. He was too happy to put two and two together. He figured, Never mind what those electrical chaps said. This Dirrillill creature is a swell sort of fellow, and not the type to imprison anyone without a very good reason!
So Jasper hopped into the Dirrillill’s flying car.
The last of the Dirrillillim swung a hand around, and a ring of symbols and controls appeared in the air as if on an invisible, floating screen. With some of his hands, he fiddled with the glowing controls. With the other hands, he made gestures while he talked.
He said, “I hope you don’t mind if I ask to see Earth before I show you around here. I have always wanted to see the planet Earth. That’s where you come from, isn’t it? Grand. What do you say we just pop on over right now? It would give me great pleasure to have you show me the sights. Th
“Why, it does sound grand! You’re almost like a . . . an uncle to me or something, aren’t you?”
The Dirrillill thought about this. “Well . . . Yes, certainly! Yes, Jasper Dash, I’m just like an uncle! Think of me as an uncle! In fact, think of me as all your relatives, mixed together! Rolled into one! Aunts, uncles, cousins, perhaps even a father or two.”
“A father? Really?” Jasper couldn’t believe it. He drew breath so quickly it was almost like a gasp or a sob.
Some of the Dirrillill’s eyes turned and looked carefully at Jasper. The Dirrillill read Jasper like a book. Then one of its mouths said, “Sure. Exactly, ha ha. A father.”
Jasper could hardly stand still, he was so excited. He bobbed up and down on his tiptoes. “I can’t wait for you to meet my mom!”
“She pretty?”
“You bet!”
“Boy, this is the best day ever!” the last of the Dirrillillim exclaimed, clapping with several pairs of hands.
Jasper said, “By the rings of Saturn, we’re going to have a swell time!”
The Dirrillill pushed a floating button. They lifted off and hovered with the mountains around them.
As it turned out, they were not going to have a swell time.
Just as the Dirrillill was about to fly them toward the Earth antenna, Jasper mentioned, “I met some awful electrical fellows a little while ago. They were frightfully zappy.”
“Them? I didn’t know they were still around.”
“Do you know, they told me that you and your people imprisoned them. I knew it couldn’t be true. I’m sure that you have an excellent explanation.”
There was a long pause. The Dirrillill didn’t say anything.
So Jasper hinted, “Which you’ll tell me right now.”
Some of the Dirrillill’s mouths smiled uneasily and said things like, “Yes,” “Ah,” “Oh!” “Um,” and “Well, it’s like this . . .”