Pieces of Gax Read online

  Two of the men lifted Gax onto their shoulders and carried him toward the door on the left.

  “Now, just a goldurned minute!” cried Spuckler as he attempted to halt them, only to find that he was being halted by the four men nearest him. They grabbed him first by his arms, then by his legs and torso and even his neck as he continued to struggle against them.

  It was too late. Gax was gone: the two men carried him into the corridor on the left and up around a corner, and disappeared.

  “Ya can't separate us!” Spuckler bellowed. “We're a team! We stick together, dagnabbit!”

  One of Hoffelhiff's men—a tall, thin man with dark glasses who I assumed was the leader of the crew—leaned over and spoke to Spuckler with the calmness of a dog trainer addressing a disobedient Chihuahua. “That robot is the property of Nugg von Hoffelhiff. You four, on the other hand, are thieves and will be dealt with accordingly.”

  I couldn't believe my ears. “Th-thieves? I'm sorry, mister, but you've made some kind of mistake here.”

  The dark-glasses guy turned to me with a patient smile. “First of all, the name is Flamstaff, not mister. And second of all, I don't make mistakes. We caught you attempting to abscond with the robot. The robot belongs to Master von Hoffelhiff. Therefore”— he waved a hand, inviting me to dispute the facts in the case—“you are thieves.”

  I gasped and sputtered a bit but could find nothing to say in response.

  “He's quite right, actually,” said Mr. Beeba, more concerned with being on the proper side of the argument than anything else. “There's no disproving the logic of his conclusion. Top-notch reasoning, any way you look at it.”

  Spuckler and I glared at Mr. Beeba. Had he utterly lost his mind?

  “Airtight, really,” he added, as if it would help matters.

  Spuckler exploded in a fit of rage: “Will you shut your ding-danged doodly-hoodly—” One of the men slapped a hand over Spuckler's mouth, reducing his verbal attack on Mr. Beeba to a very long and very muffled growl.

  “Enough,” said Flamstaff. “Within a few hours you will have the opportunity to defend yourself before a judge in Master von Hoffelhiff's court. If he upholds your claim on the robot in question, it will be returned to you.” I shot a glance at Spuckler. This news succeeded in calming him down quite a bit, though I could see he didn't entirely believe it. “Until then, I am putting all of you to work in the sorting room.”

  I turned to Mr. Beeba and whispered to him: “The sorting room? What's that?”

  “I have an idea, Akiko,” he replied, “but let's wait until we get there to see if I'm right.”

  Mr. Beeba, Poog, and I followed as Spuckler was carried into the passage on the right. Before long we arrived in a vast room with powerful lamps hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the room were huge stone tables piled high with old clothing, household items, and all sorts of other junk. It looked like a flea market that had been hit by a miniature tornado. Lined up on one side of the room were ten trolleys, each bearing a large wicker basket. On each basket hung a sign. The signs read:

  HATS

  GLOVES & SCARVES

  OTHER ITEMS OF CLOTHING

  COINS

  JEWELRY

  EYEGLASSES

  CHILDREN'S TOYS

  BOOKS & PERIODICALS

  TOUPEES

  ALL OTHER ITEMS

  “A sorting room,” said Mr. Beeba. “But of course. He'd need one, wouldn't he?”

  “All right,” said one of the guards. “Get to work. And don't put anything in the wrong basket. Master von Hoffelhiff gets very angry when that happens.” He dragged a knobby finger across his throat to emphasize the point.

  The guard joined the others at the entrance to the room, where they began playing some sort of dice game, one that had presumably been interrupted by our sudden arrival at the fortress.

  Having no choice but to follow the orders of our well-armed captors, Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Poog, and I went to one of the tables and began trying to make sense of which items belonged in which basket.

  “Where did they get all this stuff?” I asked, surveying the piles on the tables.

  Spuckler grumbled his reply: “Same place they got Gax from: Gollarondo.”

  “It's quite natural if you think about it, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba explained. “Things are falling from Gollarondo all the time. Headwear, it would seem, more than anything else.” I followed Mr. Beeba's gaze to the basket marked HATS. It was piled high with every kind of hat imaginable.

  “Picture yourself out for a stroll in Gollarondo,” said Mr. Beeba. “Your hat gets blown off by a strong gust of wind. Whereas in most cities you could just chase after it, in Gollarondo nine times out of ten—fwoop!—it sails clear down to the Moonguzzit Sea.” He thought for a moment, then added: “Sort of makes you wish you were a hatmaker in Gollarondo, doesn't it? No shortage of business for them, I should think.”

  “Wow.” I was impressed. “Hoffelhiff could make a fortune just reselling the stuff that comes falling down to him every day.”

  “Could?” said Mr. Beeba. “He does, Akiko. And has been doing so for many, many years. Come on, then,” he added. “We've got some sorting to do.”

  And so we all began the task of sorting Nugg von Hoffelhiff's windblown loot. I soon saw that it was a never-ending occupation, since every time we began to make a dent in one of the piles, a chute would open in the ceiling and deposit yet another heap of stuff.

  As the hours went by, I had nothing to do but think about the mess we'd gotten into. Or rather, the mess I'd gotten us into.

  “I'm sorry, guys,” I said to Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, and Poog as I tried in vain to separate a scarf from a pair of spectacles. “This is all my fault.”

  Spuckler, who had until this moment worn a look of intense frustration and anger, turned to me with his eyebrows drawn together in concern. “Now, that ain't true, 'Kiko,” he said. “You ain't got no business talkin' that way. Or even thinkin' that way.”

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Beeba, who interrupted his search for a matching sandal to address me directly. “In circumstances like this, one should never assign blame to an individual.” He thought for a moment, then added: “With the possible exception of Spuckler, of course.”

  Spuckler smacked Mr. Beeba soundly on the side of the head (eliciting raucous laughter from the guards), then turned back to me with the sweetness of a choirboy. “What happened today wasn't nobody's fault. It happened all on its own, and now we ain't got no choice but to jus' deal with it.”

  “But it is my fault,” I said. “If I hadn't leaned against that guardrail—”

  “Stop right there, Akiko,” said Mr. Beeba. “If I hadn't is one of the most profoundly dangerous phrases in the English language. If I were you, I'd never again venture into a sentence that begins with those words. They lead to sorrow, and often to madness.”

  “But I'm only telling the truth.”

  “But I'm only is another bad one.” Mr. Beeba's mouth was beginning to curve up at the corners. “Best stay away from those sentences as well.”

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “How about sentences that begin with how about?”

  Mr. Beeba smiled and made an exaggerated show of considering the idea. “Oh, I suppose they're harmless enough,” he said, “though I'm much more fond of sentences that begin with generally speaking, ipso facto, and to a large degree.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes. “You are such a goofball.”

  Our sorting chores carried on late into the night. Not that we could tell it was night: it was a windowless room, and we had to keep track of time based on periodic announcements from Poog. Finally, around three in the morning, things stopped coming through the chutes in the ceiling, and we were able to completely clear the tables of the accumulated stuff in a matter of an hour or two. Just as Spuckler was depositing the last article — a ratty old toupee that I shuddered to think anyone would actually buy—in the proper basket, Flamstaff burst i
nto the room and announced that our trial would begin shortly.

  “This way, quickly, quickly,” he said as he steered us toward a corridor leading up and away from the sorting room. “The judge invariably rules against those who are late for their own trials.”

  Soon we arrived in a large oak-paneled room with a raised platform on the far end, an empty jury box to the right of the platform, and very little else. In the middle of the platform was a tall straight-backed chair. Next to it was a small table with a basket on it. The basket was filled to overflowing with what looked to be monster-sized walnuts. “Bognuts,” explained Mr. Beeba. “Hoffelhiff's favorite snack.”

  “All rise!” shouted Flamstaff, in spite of the fact that no one in the room was seated. “His Honor the Esteemed and Honorable Judge Hoffelhiff is honorably honoring us with his presence!”

  “Judge Hoffelhiff?” I said. “What's going on here? Is the judge related to Nugg von Hoffelhiff?”

  “We should be so lucky,” said Mr. Beeba. “In all likelihood the judge is Nugg von Hoffelhiff.” He paused and added with a surprising degree of sympathy: “It's a very small island. Doubling up of duties is unavoidable, really.”

  From behind a curtain on the platform stepped a short, heavyset man dressed in robes and a powdered wig. His face was pink and pockmarked, his nose as big and round as a mandarin orange. He stomped over to the chair, sat down, and immediately began cracking the bognuts with his teeth.

  One or two minutes (and several bognuts) later, Hoffelhiff leaned forward and trained his eyes on Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Poog, and me, as if noticing us for the first time.

  “Who are these people?” he said. “What are they doing here?”

  Flamstaff answered: “They are charged with attempted burglary, Your Honor. We caught them red-handed as they tried to take a robot from waters belonging to Master Hoffelhiff.”

  “Me, you mean.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “That's not burglary,” said Hoffelhiff as he munched on a bognut. “There's no building.”

  Flamstaff cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, Your Hon—”

  “Burglary's when you break into a building and make off with something.” He swallowed noisily. “Nothing to do with fishing something out of the water.”

  Mr. Beeba grinned and whispered to me: “Things are going well.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Flamstaff, “they are also charged with banditry.”

  “What, they took the robot at gunpoint?”

  Flamstaff seemed thoroughly baffled. “Gunpoint?”

  “Or a knife to the throat,” said Hoffelhiff before cracking open another nut. “Banditry's armed robbery. Can't be a bandit if you don't have a weapon.”

  “Yes, well, they, uh”—Flamstaff scratched his head—“weren't technically armed at the time.”

  Mr. Beeba chuckled giddily. “Things are going very well. The charges are dropping like flies.”

  “You had no business charging them with burglary and banditry,” said Hoffelhiff. “Simple thievery would have done the job.”

  “Where's my robot?” said Spuckler.

  “Order in the court!” shouted Flamstaff, though Spuckler had barely even raised his voice.

  Hoffelhiff yawned loudly and said: “Now hurry up and charge them with thievery before I run out of bognuts.”

  “Oh, come on,” I whispered to Mr. Beeba. “They can't change the charges right in the middle of the trial.”

  “But of course they can, Akiko. We Smoovians pride ourselves on the flexibility of our legal system.”

  “I hereby charge you with thievery,” said Flamstaff.

  “And trespassing,” said Hoffelhiff. “That'll stick.”

  “And trespassing,” said Flamstaff, pausing to allow Hoffelhiff an opportunity to come up with further charges. Hoffelhiff cracked a bognut shell and thoughtfully chewed its contents before waving Flamstaff onward.

  “Do you have anything to say in your defense?” asked Flamstaff.

  “Yeah,” said Spuckler before Mr. Beeba could stop him. “That robot is mine: M-Y-N, mine! You know it, I know it, and you know it too.” Spuckler pointed at Hoffelhiff, himself, and—for reasons I can't explain— Poog. “Now, if you know what's good for ya, you'll give it back to me, before someone—I'm not sayin' who, but he's in this here room right now—ends up with dislocated shoulders and”—he raised and shook a threatening fist—“a great big shiner to match.”

  Hoffelhiff sat back and gave Spuckler's words a surprising degree of serious consideration.

  “A pitiful defense,” he said after a moment. “Not a leg to stand on. Someone else have a go.”

  Mr. Beeba cleared his throat, only to have Hoffelhiff cut him off. “Not you.” He dug through his basket, trying to find an unopened bognut among the accumulated shells. “I don't like the way you look.” Mr. Beeba, oddly enough, nodded in agreement. “Let's hear from the one with the pigtails.”

  “M-me?” I asked.

  “Yes, say something in your defense. I'm sure you can do better than that bit about the dislocated shoulders.” Spuckler squinted angrily but stayed quiet.

  “Um, look,” I said, trying to remember the way lawyers talked in movies and TV shows I'd seen (and feeling fairly certain that they didn't say things like “Um, look”). “There are a number of, uh, facts in this case that are, uhm, not under dispute.”

  “In dispute,” whispered Mr. Beeba.

  “Or even in dispute,” I added, “if you want to put it that way.” I stepped forward and began pacing back and forth, thinking it might make me look a bit more lawyerly. Hoffelhiff leaned forward with great interest.

  “Arobot by the name of Gax fell from Gollarondo into the Moonguzzit Sea yesterday afternoon,” I continued. “A robot belonging to Mr. Spuckler Boach. Now, my client,” I said, not entirely sure if Spuckler really was my client (or even what the word really meant, to be perfectly honest), “is an upright citizen who has never, ever stolen anything in his entire life.”

  “Providin' ya don't count that herd of Bropka lizards on the planet Thnib,” said Spuckler, apparently thinking he was helping the case. “But that was a long time ago,” he added, bobbing his head. “Long time ago.”

  I coughed and gave Spuckler a look that I hoped would convey Please, in the name of all that's holy, don't say anything else. “Judge—er, I mean… Master Hoffelhiff now claims possession of Gax. And there is a certain, uh, validity to this claim.”

  Hoffelhiff munched a bognut, smiled, and said to himself, “Things are going well.”

  “And yet,” I said, raising a finger and feeling a surge of confidence, “I propose that a robot is different from a hat”—I ticked the items off on my fingers — “or a pair of glasses, or, or, or …” My confidence faltered a bit, as I was unable to think of another item but somehow felt it crucial that my list include at least three things. “… or, or, or a freshly baked pie accidentally knocked off a windowsill.”

  Hoffelhiff gazed at the ceiling as he considered this last item. “Haven't had one of those for years. But I see what you're driving at.” He waved me onward.

  I took a deep breath and decided to wrap up my case as quickly as possible.

  “A robot is a companion,” I said. “More like a family member than an article of clothing. You can't separate a robot from his owner. You just can't.”

  Hoffelhiff raised his eyebrows and nodded sagely.

  I folded my arms in front of my chest and struck a defiant pose. It may not have been the most brilliant argument, but it was the best I could do.

  “I rest my case.”

  “The court will adjourn,” said Flamstaff in an unnecessarily loud voice, “until His Honor the Honorable Hoffelhiff reaches a verdict.” Mr. Beeba, Poog, Spuckler, and I began to move toward the door but were halted by Flamstaff. “Where do you think you're going?”

  Mr. Beeba was the first to venture a reply: “But you said the court will adjourn.”

  “Yes,
but that doesn't mean you can leave.”

  “That's precisely what it means,” said Mr. Beeba.

  “No, no, no,” said Flamstaff. “It couldn't possibly mean that.”

  “It most definitely does,” said Mr. Beeba, “when employed by anyone other than yourself.” He paused, then recited from memory: “ ‘Adjourn: to move from one place to another.’ It's the second or third definition in most dictionaries.”

  “Which dictionaries?”

  “My dictionaries.”

  “You need to get new dictionaries.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do too.”

  “Do not!”

  “Do too!”

  “I've reached my verdict,” bellowed Hoffelhiff, halting the argument with a well-aimed bognut shell fired straight between Mr. Beeba's and Flamstaff's noses.

  We all turned to Nugg von Hoffelhiff, who had risen from his chair and was tapping his foot impatiently. For a good half minute the room was extremely quiet, and all I could hear was the tap-tap-tapping of Hoffelhiff's foot and the inhaling and exhaling of Mr. Beeba, who was gasping so loudly I thought he might hyperventilate.

  “Guilty,” said Hoffelhiff.

  “Things are going… very badly indeed,” whimpered Mr. Beeba, who was now on the verge of fainting.

  “His Honor the Honorable Hoffelhiff has honored us with a verdict,” announced Flamstaff, beaming with satisfaction. “You are guilty, all of you.”

  “Not them,” said Hoffelhiff. “You.”

  “Me?” said Flamstaff. “But I'm not even on trial!”

  “Silence!” Nugg von Hoffelhiff stepped down from the platform. “You told me the robot was ownerless and had been floating there for weeks.”

  Flamstaff opened his mouth several times but failed to find words. “Weeks, minutes,” he said at last, “I fail to see what difference it makes.”

  “Makes a world of difference,” said Hoffelhiff. “You heard what the pigtailed one said: a robot's not like a hat, or a pie. It's a companion.”