Children of Jubilee by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“But how . . . ?” I began.

Alcibiades held up one of his upper tentacles, and I was pretty sure the motion was like a human holding up a hand to indicate, No, no, let me talk now. You just listen.

“I am ashamed to tell this story,” he whispered.

“Yes, my people—humans, those of us from Earth—we have a lot to be ashamed of too,” I said.

Alcibiades bowed the blob at the top of his body that seemed to correlate to a human head.

“Then perhaps you can understand that we are not like the Enforcers?” he asked. “Enforcers do not feel shame, and when they came here, well . . .”

“Then maybe this is all their fault, not yours?” I asked, with an eagerness that made me sound almost as young as Cana. It felt as if convincing Alcibiades that his people had actually done nothing wrong would make humans seem less guilty too.

“But that is not true,” Alcibiades said with another heavy sigh.

“Please, can you just start at the beginning?” I asked.

“The beginning . . . ,” Alcibiades repeated. “My people and my planet were rich and proud and happy. The Zacadi pearls—even you have seen that they are a marvel, correct?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And all you know is that they give light and never burn out,” Alcibiades said with a shrug.

“Well, I suspected that there was more to them, but we only had the one, so we were afraid to experiment much.” I paused. “Are you sure they never burn out? What I remember from science class—is that even possible? Perpetual energy machines are just fantasies, aren’t they?”

“Maybe Zacadi pearls can burn out, but no Zacadian has lived long enough to witness such a thing,” Alcibiades conceded.

“Do they just occur naturally on your planet?” I asked. “Or did your people invent them?”

“Our people have many stories about where they came from, and why they are buried in our soil,” Alcibiades said. “Do those stories even matter now? Call them a gift of nature. No Zacadian remembers a time when the pearls were not part of our lives.”

“Limitless energy, always available,” I said. “You live on a lucky planet.”

“The planet may still be lucky, but we are not,” Alcibiades murmured.

“What changed?” I asked. “You were rich and proud and happy and then . . .” It seemed really rude to point out that he and all his people were confined to a prison cell now, with no possessions whatsoever, as far as I could tell.

A shudder passed through Alcibiades, unsettling every tentacle.

“My people advanced quickly to the point of space exploration,” he said. “We had so much power and energy at our disposal—spaceships were toys for us.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“When I told Cana this story, she said it sounded like toddlers getting their own cars,” he said. “Then she had to explain what a car was. My people skipped that stage of development and went straight to airplanes and flying.”

“Cana meant toddlers would crash cars, right?” I said. “So .

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