Pieces of Gax Page 5

  Spuckler stepped forward excitedly. “All right, all right, so cut to the chase: do I get Gax back or not?”

  “The robot is yours, good fellow,” said Hoffelhiff. “Come. I'll take you to him at once.”

  Flamstaff was outraged. “But—”

  “Another word out of you, Flammy,” said Hoffelhiff with a sharply pointed finger, “and I'll sentence you to hard labor in the bognut groves.”

  Flamstaff clamped his lips shut and directed his attention to the patch of floor near his feet.

  “Now come along,” Hoffelhiff said to the rest of us, “before I change my mind.”

  Nugg von Hoffelhiff led us out of the courtroom and up through a stairwell into a large hall with tall stained-glass windows. “My apologies for having detained you,” he said to me, now coming across as a very kind—if somewhat scatterbrained—gentleman. “A very finely argued case, I must say,” he continued. “So where was it you studied law, then?”

  “Oh, you know,” I said, fairly certain that he wouldn't be impressed by my mentioning Middleton Elementary, “a little here, a little there.”

  Finally we arrived at a small storage room in the back of the fortress. In it were a great many robots, most of them rusting and covered with cobwebs. “No one even came looking for these poor chaps,” said Hoffelhiff, blowing on one and producing a massive cloud of dust. “Your dedication is admirable.”

  He went up on tiptoe to pull a small wooden box down from a shelf in the back of the room. “Here's your robot, then. I'm sure you'll find him in good working order.” Hoffelhiff handed the box to Spuckler.

  Spuckler looked at the box. It was roughly one foot square: hardly big enough to hold a couple of Gax's wheels, much less the bulk of his body. “What is this, some kinda joke?”

  “Open it; he's in there,” said Hoffelhiff. “I put him there myself just an hour ago.”

  Mr. Beeba, Poog, and I huddled around Spuckler as he opened the carton. Inside was a metallic box with two robotic eyes on one side. The eyes immediately darted back and forth, producing a quiet mechanical hum with each move. It took me a couple of seconds to realize we were looking at Gax's head.

  “Good heavens,” whispered Mr. Beeba.

  “What… in … tarnation?” said Spuckler, lifting Gax's head out of the box and cradling it in his hands. “Gax, li'l buddy. What've they done to ya?”

  “Oh, right, almost forgot,” said Hoffelhiff, rummaging through a nearby crate of spare parts. “You'll be wanting this, I'm sure.” He handed Mr. Beeba Gax's helmet. “Didn't quite fit in the box,” he added, by way of explanation.

  “Ya …” Spuckler was in shock. “Ya took him apart.” His eyes moved between Gax's face and Hoffelhiff's. “Ya broke him into pieces.”

  “Yes, well, I had to maximize my profits, didn't I?” said Nugg von Hoffelhiff. “The spare parts of Gax units are quite valuable these days.”

  Spuckler slowly turned toward me and placed Gax's head in my hands. “Hold this for a minute, ’Kiko.” Then, in a fraction of a second …

  “I'll pulverize ya!” Spuckler had Hoffelhiff by his collar and was shaking him so hard I thought he might break the man's neck. “I'll wipe the floor with ya!”

  “Spuckler!” I cried. “You're going to hurt him!”

  “This ain't hurtin’ him, ’Kiko,” growled Spuckler, shaking Hoffelhiff even harder. “Believe you me, I'm just warmin’ up!”

  “Stop!” I said, setting Gax's head on a nearby crate and grabbing one of Spuckler's arms.

  “Spuckler, unhand him!” shouted Mr. Beeba, grabbing the other.

  We both pulled on Spuckler's arms as hard as we could, but nothing could break his grip on Hoffelhiff's collar. “He ripped up Gax!” Spuckler cried, his eyes wild with anger. “He tore him limb from limb!”

  Poog blurted something warbly and shrill, which Mr. Beeba translated as follows: “Spuckler, you fool!” (The “you fool” part was probably not in Poog's original sentence.) “This fellow may well be the only one who knows where the rest of Gax is!”

  “Qu-qu-quite,” Hoffelhiff managed to say while his head rocked wildly from side to side.

  “He's a murderer!” Spuckler had pretty much lost it by this point. “A cannibalizer!”

  “Stop, you lunatic!” shouted Mr. Beeba, leaping onto Spuckler's back, grabbing tufts of his hair with both fists and yanking with all his might. “Stop this madness at once!”

  Then, suddenly:

  “PLEASE, SIR.” A very familiar robotic voice filled the room, freezing Spuckler like a statue. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.”

  We all turned toward Gax's head, which sat motionless where I'd left it.

  “THE REST OF ME IS NO LONGER ON THIS ISLAND, SIR,” Gax's head continued. “YOU MUST LEAVE AT ONCE IF THERE IS TO BE ANY HOPE OF PUTTING ME BACK TOGETHER.”

  Spuckler let go of Hoffelhiff, allowing him to drop noisily to the floor. Mr. Beeba let go of Spuckler's hair and slipped down off his back. I released Spuckler's arm and crept over to Gax's side, where Poog was already hovering, listening intently.

  Spuckler leaned down until his eyes were directly across from Gax's. “No longer on the island?”

  “MASTER HOFFELHIFF SOLD THE PIECES OF MY BODY TO THREE DIFFERENT BUYERS YESTERDAY EVENING,” Gax explained. “THE NECK TO ONE, THE BODY TO ANOTHER, AND THE WHEELS TO A THIRD. I OVERHEARD THE ENTIRE EXCHANGE.” Gax paused, then added: “ALL THREE BUYERS HAVE SINCE RETURNED TO THEIR RESPECTIVE PLACES OF RESIDENCE.”

  “He sold ya?” Spuckler's eyes were wide with disbelief. “He broke ya up and sold ya piece by piece?”

  “I entirely understand your anger,” said Hoffelhiff, who was by now on his feet and giving himself a thorough dusting off. “I will gladly pay you a percentage of the sale.” He raised a hand, as if to stop us from thanking him. “Twenty percent. Extremely generous, by any standard.”

  “BEFORE YOU BEGIN THROTTLING MASTER HOFFELHIFF AGAIN, SIR,” said Gax, who knew Spuckler better than any of us, “MIGHT I SUGGEST PURSUING MY NECK FIRST? IT'S IN A SMALL VILLAGE ON THE COAST. WITH AN EARLY START YOU MAY WELL RETRIEVE IT BEFORE DAYLIGHT.”

  Spuckler relaxed his hands, which had indeed already been curled into throttling mode, and nodded at Gax's request. “All right, Mr. 'Bot Buster,” he said, turning to Nugg von Hoffelhiff. “Where's our ship?” Before the answer came, he added: “An' don't tell me you broke it up and sold the parts.”

  Hoffelhiff stared sheepishly at Spuckler and took much longer to reply than he should have.

  “You drive a hard bargain. I'll give you thirty percent of both sales.”

  As the sun broke over the Moonguzzit Sea, Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Poog, Gax (or what little of Gax we had), and I were shooting across the waves in a decommissioned fogglenaut. Hoffelhiff had given it to us—along with a quick breakfast of boiled bognut meal—after confessing that he'd sold our ship to a scrap dealer who'd crushed it down to the size of a lunch box even before leaving the island.

  “Not to worry,” he'd said as we climbed aboard and prepared to set sail, “you should be able to reach all three of those buyers before the day is out. Two days, tops.”

  This would have been reassuring coming from anyone else, but by this point I'd learned that Hoffelhiff had a nasty habit of making things sound simpler than they actually were. I asked Mr. Beeba how long he thought it would really take to retrieve all of Gax's parts: neck, body, and wheels.

  “It would be folly to attempt an accurate estimate at this stage, Akiko,” said Mr. Beeba. “Let's just see if we can save Gax's neck for the time being.” Then he chuckled and said: “Did you catch that, Akiko? Save his neck. It's a pun.”

  I rolled my eyes and pretended I hadn't heard him. “So where are we headed first, Spuckler?” I asked.

  “The village of Bwibblington,” said Spuckler. “Just up the coast a spell. Hoffelhiff says he sold Gax's neck to a little old lady who lives there.” He paused and let out a long, sad sigh. “I jus' hope she didn't turn around an' sell it to
someone else.” I had a sudden, terrible vision of us racing around Smoo for the rest of our lives, Gax's various components always just out of reach.

  “I've got an idea,” I said. “What if we go somewhere and buy a new neck for Gax?”

  Mr. Beeba gasped. Spuckler's jaw dropped. Poog stared at me with stunned, glassy eyes. And Gax, whose head I had been entrusted with holding in my lap, shivered audibly.

  “BUT MA'AM,” said Gax. “MY NECK IS MY NECK, A NEW NECK WOULD BE … SOME OTHER ROBOT’S NECK.”

  “Yeah, but…,” I said, before realizing that I had somehow stumbled into a very emotional topic for Spuckler and Gax. Indeed, for all of us.

  Gax needed to be reconstructed as he had been before, exactly as he had been before. Not for technical reasons. Not even for sentimental reasons. Just because, well… just because it was the right thing to do. You don't take shortcuts when it comes to friends. If you do, then what kind of friend are you?

  “BUT WHAT, MA'AM?”

  I looked Gax in the eye and nodded slowly. “But nothing,” I said. “Shift it into high gear, Spuckler. The sooner we get there, the better.”

  By the time we got to Bwibblington, the sun was well above the horizon, and the sky was a cloudless, dazzling shade of blue. Though not as dramatic as Gollarondo, Bwibblington was remarkable in its own way. It was what Mr. Beeba called a bridge village. There were a number of them on Smoo: villages that had sprung up around an important bridge, thereby guaranteeing visitors and commerce. Bwibblington was unusual in that its location—the shoreline being composed of sheer cliff faces, with little in the way of level land anywhere nearby—had forced the village planners to build Bwibblington, in its entirety, on the bridge itself.

  “Here, Beebs,” said Spuckler, handing Mr. Beeba one of the crudely drawn maps Nugg von Hoffelhiff had given to us. “Find out which one of them shacks up there b'longs to Mrs. Wimmaneen Slarf.”

  “Let's see. Seven four twee Pinnary Lane,” said Mr. Beeba, raising the map until it obscured most of his face. “Shouldn't be so hard to find.”

  “Seven four twee?” I said. “What's twee supposed to mean?”

  “Twee?” said Mr. Beeba. “Akiko, you're in the sixth grade now. Surely you know the number twee. Should have learned it back in kindergarten, I daresay.”

  “The number… twee.” I drew my eyebrows tightly together. “Where I come from, Mr. Beeba, I'm pretty sure there is no number twee.”

  “Oh, but there's got to be,” said Mr. Beeba. “It's the number between two and three.” He gave me a pitying stare, as if I'd been deprived of one of human civilization's greatest advances. “Twee.”

  I shrugged and said: “I think we just call it two and a half.”

  “Two and a half?” said Mr. Beeba. He shuddered and turned his attention back to the map. “How clunky.”

  Minutes later we arrived at a dock directly below the village, got out of our fogglenaut, and climbed the rickety wooden stairway that led to Bwibblington. As we got closer, we passed several Bwibblingtonians. They were small people, most no more than four feet tall. They had pale gray-blue skin, very widely spaced eyes, and as far as I could see, no nose whatsoever. They all bowed and said “Safe crossing” to us as they passed. The local greeting, Poog explained.

  “IT'S HERE,” said Gax when we reached the village, “MY NECK IS DEFINITELY HERE, AND IN GOOD WORKING CONDITION.”

  I lifted Gax's head in both hands and looked into his eyes. “How do you know that, Gax?”

  “THERE ARE SMALL HOMING DEVICES IN EACH OF MY BODY PARTS,” said Gax.

  “Installed 'em myself,” said Spuckler proudly, “for just such an occasion.”

  “UNFORTUNATELY, THE SIGNALS THEY SEND OUT ARE WEAK AND DON'T TRAVEL MORE THAN A FEW HUNDRED FEET,” said Gax. “BUT AS I NEAR THE HOMING DEVICES I AM ABLE TO COMMUNICATE QUITE CLEARLY WITH THEM. WITH EFFORT I CAN EVEN MAKE THEM OBEY MY COMMANDS.”

  A kind merchant directed us to Pinnary Lane, and soon we were standing at the house marked seven four twee. The numeral for twee, by the way, looks like this:

  I held my breath and rang the doorbell.

  PEEM POAM

  Before long we heard footsteps coming to the door.

  Maybe we'll get lucky and everything will go smoothly, I thought. We're overdue for some good luck, aren't we?

  The door creaked open and there stood a hunched old woman with a cane, so wrinkled and frail looking I feared the next gust of wind that blew down Pinnary Lane might carry her away and out to sea. She had a tiny hooked nose (Bwibblingtonian noses emerged only with age, it seemed), incredibly thick glasses, and wispy white hair that looked like fluff from a cottonwood tree.

  “Safe crossing,” she said, squinting and blinking at us. She didn't look like someone who got visitors very often.

  “Safe crossing, madame,” said Mr. Beeba. “Do forgive this abrupt and unheralded visit. I sincerely hope that we have not called upon you at a disadvantageous moment, drawing you away from importunate personal affairs, or, heaven forbid, rousing you during a moment of well-earned tranquil repose.”

  Wimmaneen Slarf coughed and adjusted her glasses. “Speak normal,” she said.

  I stifled a laugh as Mr. Beeba cleared his throat.

  “I, er”—he cleared it again—”hope this isn't a bad time.”

  Mrs. Slarf blinked several times. “Bad time for what?”

  “Yes, well…” Mr. Beeba tapped the fingers of both hands together. “Perhaps I'd better just get to the point.”

  “Ya can say that again,” said Spuckler.

  “Ahem.” Mr. Beeba took Gax's head from my hands and showed it to Mrs. Slarf. “I believe that you are in possession of a robotic neck that was, until very recently, attached to this Gax unit.”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Beeba. “I am prepared to offer you double the price you—” Mr. Beeba stopped talking and blinked in a way that made him look surprisingly similar to Mrs. Slarf. “Did you say no?”

  “Nope,” she said. “I said nope.”

  Mr. Beeba took a step back, as if Mrs. Slarf's words had knocked him in the chest. “Do you mean to say you do not have this Gax unit's neck?”

  “I don't just mean to say it,” she replied. “I'm saying it.”

  “But…” Mr. Beeba was so taken aback he began several sentences in rapid succession, abandoning each after the first word. “You … Yesterday … Surely…” He stamped his feet with frustration. “Master Hoffelhiff…”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Slarf, her eyebrows rising. “That thing I bought at Hoffelhiff's yesterday. It's a robot's neck, is it?”

  I stepped forward. “That's right. So you've got it, huh?”

  “Well,” she said, “yes and no. Here, follow me.” She led us around to the back of the house. “It's on my property. But it doesn't belong to me anymore. I gave it to Fofo as a birthday gift.” We all went through a narrow alleyway, turned a corner, and stepped into Mrs. Slarf's backyard. “She's become real fond of it, actually.”

  There, sitting alone on an oversized cushion in one corner of the yard, was a furry pink creature about the size of a guinea pig. She had large elephant-ish ears, almond-shaped eyes with long eyelashes, and a short fluffy tail. Under her front paws was a crooked length of metal with wires hanging out of each end: Mrs. Slarf's backyard pet was resting its feet on Gax's neck.

  Spuckler stepped forward to grab it but was stopped by Mrs. Slarf's cane. “Not so fast, shaggy-hair!” Small as she was, Mrs. Slarf sounded surprisingly tough, and Spuckler moved back.

  “Now,” Mrs. Slarf said, turning her attention to Mr. Beeba. “What was that you were saying about double the price?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Mr. Beeba, pulling a billfold out from under his belt. “It is my understanding that you paid twenty gilpots for our robot's neck. I will happily offer you forty gilpots to buy it back.”

  “Make it a hundred and you've got yourself a deal.” Mrs. Slarf smiled at Mr. Beeb
a with all seven of her teeth.

  “One hundred!” Mr. Beeba was outraged. “That's five times what you paid for it. Just yesterday'!”

  “Beebs,” growled Spuckler, “time's a-wastin'. Fork over the dough an' let's skedaddle.”

  Mr. Beeba groaned as he counted out the money. “Daylight banditry,” he muttered as he handed Mrs. Slarf a wad of bills. (I smiled, wondering if Nugg von Hoffelhiff would approve of the use of the word banditry in this context. Mrs. Slarf was armed only with shrewdness, but hey, maybe that's the most important weapon of all.)

  “Nice doing business with you. It's all yours,” said Mrs. Slarf as she went into her house. Before she closed the door, she poked her head back out and said: “Try not to make a mess.”

  If I'd paid better attention, I would have noticed that “try not to make a mess” was a pretty strange thing to say to people who wanted to take a piece of metal away from a cute little furry animal.

  Then again, if I'd paid better attention, I'd have realized that she wasn't talking to us in the first place.

  She was talking to Fofo.

  “One down, two to go,” said Spuckler as he stepped forward, bent down, and picked up one end of Gax's neck. Fofo made a soft purring sound and happily clamped her tiny mouth around the other end. When Spuckler stood up straight, he found that he was carrying not only Gax's neck, but also Fofo, who was hanging happily from it by her teeth, like a puppy dangling from an oversized bone.

  “Heh, heh. Playful critter, ain'tcha?” Spuckler scratched Fofo under her chin. “Sorry to run off with your breakfast, li'l lady, but we gotta vamoose, and we ain't takin' you with us.”

  Spuckler grabbed hold of Fofo's tail and tried to pull her off Gax's neck, but Fofo was very firmly attached, and determined not to let go.

  Poog made a loud, gurgly announcement, and we all turned to Mr. Beeba for the translation. “Poog says that this little creature is a rather more formidable opponent than she appears to be. It would be highly unwise to antagonize her.”