Pieces of Gax Page 9

  I thrust one arm forward and watched as my outstretched fingers drew ever closer to Gax's body. The fires of Thirgen's rocket boosters were just a foot or two from my face, and the heat was almost unbearable. Still, if I could just deal with it and stay focused …

  My fingers were now no more than a foot away from Gax's neck.

  Now just six inches.

  Now just three.

  fsutch

  I gritted my teeth in triumph as my fingers closed around Gax's neck and held fast.

  Thirgen's head spun around and regarded me with both anger and astonishment.

  “IMPOSSIBLE!”

  He pushed a few buttons on the front of the rocket boosters and immediately began corkscrewing through the air in an effort to make me lose my grip.

  I stretched my other hand out and snapped it around Gax's neck just as I began to whip around and around, whirling like a human propeller. At the same time, I realized with a sickening turn of my stomach that Poog was no longer anywhere near me. My hold on Gax was the only thing keeping me from plummeting to the bustling streets of Omega Doy Zarius, many hundreds of feet below.

  “LET GO!” cried Thirgen.

  He leveled off for a moment, pushed more buttons, then soared skyward. Within seconds we had blasted dozens of stories into the air and risen to such a height that my ears were popping like mad. By the time Thirgen eased off from his ascent, we were higher than the tallest skycraper in the city. I stared down at the seemingly microscopic streets below, horrified in my certainty of what was coming next.

  Sure enough, Thirgen entered into a nosedive of cataclysmic proportions.

  vvvvvvvvv

  Forget roller coasters. Forget bungee jumping. Nothing could make me feel the sheer terror I experienced as we plunged straight down in an accelerated free fall…

  vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

  … toward what promised to be a spectacular crash somewhere on the pavement below.

  No, I told myself. Thirge's crazy. But he's not suicidal.

  Down we went. Down, down, down …

  And he's definitely not going to allow Gax to get damaged. If I can get close to as much of Gax as possible…

  Tensing the muscles of my arms, I began to pull myself along Gax's neck. I had to get as close to his body as I could before Thirgen got anywhere near the ground.

  vvvvvvvvvvVVV

  We were now rocketing down through a narrow space left between two enormous skyscrapers. Windows sped past me on all sides as a crowded marketplace below grew nearer and nearer.

  VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

  Using all my strength, I grabbed hold of Gax's body and pulled myself against it. I was now wrapped around Gax like a coat, and Thirgen could do no damage to me without risking damage to Gax as well.

  VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

  My eyes grew wide with horror as the tents and crates and fruits and vegetables of the marketplace rushed up to meet us. I pulled myself even more tightly against Gax and half closed my eyes as …

  SHUP

  SPOP

  FLUP-FLUP-FLUP

  … Thirgen made a hairpin turn and hurled himself horizontally through the marketplace at top speed …

  FWAP

  SKOP

  SPLA-DAP-DAP-DAP-DAP

  … smashing into tables, ripping through sheets of canvas, sending terrified alien shoppers diving to the ground in all directions.

  SHUP

  SHAP

  SHEP

  SHIRP

  SP'SHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  Finally we shot out of the marketplace, spiraling wildly through several impossibly narrow alleyways before Thirgen returned to a more or less even keel. Then he soared back up to the tops of the skyscrapers and spun his head to see how much more punishment I could take.

  What he saw couldn't have been very pretty. I was covered with a variety of splattered vegetables, broken eggs, and several pages of the Daily Skraboosh, which were plastered to my body with a substance that had the consistency, flavor, and eye-stinging qualities of spicy mustard.

  What he saw couldn't have been very reassuring, either: I was still holding on to Gax, and was not planning to let go anytime soon.

  “ALL RIGHT, THEN,” said Thirgen. “IT SEEMS YOU MUST BE DEALT WITH MORE DIRECTLY.”

  Thirgen rocketed from the city center and carried me all the way to an abandoned stretch of waterfront many miles out of town. The whole area was marshy and damp, and obscured by a heavy blanket of mist rolling in off the sea. Thirgen found a secluded port and glided down for a landing on one of its dilapidated piers. He then released Gax's lifeless body, and Gax and I thudded to the boards together.

  “THERE WILL BE NO ONE TO INTERFERE WITH ME HERE,” said Thirgen, as much to himself as to me.

  I looked around. The last traces of twilight had left the sky, and only the glow of an orange moon allowed me to see the rotted-out hulks of engines surrounding us — the remains of some long-forgotten shipment, unloaded, unclaimed, and left there to rust in the elements.

  There was a moment's pause; then …

  K'CHIK-K'CHIK-K'CHIK

  Three separate mechanical arms folded out from the right side of Thirgen's body, each of them holding a laser pistol. The weapons spun, rotated, and locked in on three different parts of my body: an arm, a leg, a foot.

  K'CHIK-K'CHIK-K'CHIK

  Three more arms with laser pistols emerged from the left side of Thirgen's body, mirroring the actions of their counterparts on the right.

  There would be no dodging Thirgen's lasers this time.

  I was trapped.

  Thirgen didn't fire right away. He simply stood there, regarding me with cold indifference.

  “YOU KNOW, GAX UNITS ARE PROGRAMMED NOT TO USE WEAPONRY AGAINST SENTIENT BEINGS,” said Thirgen. “IT'S VERY DEEPLY INGRAINED IN OUR MOST VITAL CODES. THAT'S WHY YOUR PEG-LEGGED FRIEND ESCAPED WITH JUST A FEW INCAPACITATING WOUNDS: MY CODES PREVENTED ME FROM HITTING HIM WHERE I REALLY WANTED TO.”

  All was silent apart from the waters of the Moonguzzit Sea gently lapping against the pier. The ghostly moon, now more red than orange, hung low in the sky, blurred by the increasingly thick fog.

  “THE LASER PISTOL I HAD AIMED AT YOU EARLIER WAS A BLUFF. I COULDN'T HAVE ACTUALLY FIRED A LASER BEAM INTO YOUR SKULL.” Thirgen paused, then added, “NOT ON SUCH SHORT NOTICE, ANYWAY.”

  My heart, already pounding, began to thump even harder.

  “YOU SEE, THE CODES CAN BE OVERRIDDEN.”

  ttzzz

  One of Thirgen's laser pistols changed targets ever so slightly, from my left arm to my left shoulder.

  “IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE EXTRA TIME, THAT'S ALL. I'M OVERRIDING THEM RIGHT NOW, EVEN AS I SPEAK TO YOU.”

  My head was spinning. I was shaking like mad. There had to be some way out of this.

  “ANOTHER MINUTE AND I'LL BE FULLY CAPABLE OF FIRING THESE LASER PISTOLS WHEREVER I WISH,” said Thirgen. “YOUR HEAD, LET'S SAY. OR YOUR HEART. OR BOTH, SIMULTANEOUSLY.”

  Sweat poured down my face.

  chzzzz-ttzzzzz

  Two more of Thirgen's laser pistols changed direction: one to point at a thigh, the other to point at my stomach.

  “ANOTHER FORTY-THREE SECONDS, TO BE PRECISE.”

  I closed my eyes. A sickening feeling began to rise within me that after all this time, after all the scrapes I'd been through with Spuckler and Poog and Gax and Mr. Beeba, it was all going to come to an end right here.

  No, I thought. Poog is here somewhere. He wouldn't abandon me like this.

  There was a soft splashing noise somewhere behind me, as if a slightly larger wave had suddenly hit the pier. I felt water soak through my shirt and dampen my back.

  “TWENTY-NINE SECONDS.”

  fftzzz-kkzzzz-mmzzz

  Laser pistols were now pointed directly at my head, my neck, my heart—laser pistols that Thirgen would be fully capable of firing in less than half a minute.

  Wait, I thought. Water against my back: that's impossible. We'r
e a good fifideen feet above the water.

  “SEVENTEEN SECONDS.”

  I reached behind my back, and my fingers touched something cold, wet, slimy, and alive. I instinctively pulled my hand away.

  chzzz-vvzzz-ffzzz

  Now all six laser pistols were aimed at either my head or my heart. There was no way any of them would miss at such close range.

  The slimy thing behind me, I thought. It's there for a reason.

  “NINE SECONDS.”

  I reached behind my back again and felt around for the creature I'd touched a moment before. As my fingers touched it, I heard the voice—Poog's voice — the voice that spoke to me in the ear within my ear, the ear in the very center of my head….

  The voice said: Throw.

  “FIVE … FOUR … THREE …”

  I closed my hand around the slimy thing and without even looking to see what it was threw it straight into an opening on the side of Thirgen's body.

  FFFSSSSHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh

  There was a hissing sound. Sparks began shooting out of Thirgen in all directions.

  “TWO … ONE …”

  I jumped and rolled to one side.

  PYOOM-PY'PYOOM-PYOOM!

  The laser pistols fired erratically in all directions, each missing me by a pretty wide margin. The slimy thing I'd thrown at Thirgen was causing him to have a major meltdown.

  But then, how could it have caused anything less?

  The thing I'd thrown was a hurpleskap.

  “I'LL …,” said Thirgen, his voice beginning to degenerate into electronic gibberish as a flurry of yellow sparks blew from the base of his head, “GET::.::::. :YOOU::::.:::.::. :FFOORR.:::.::::….:::::.:::.::: .THIZZZZZZZZZZ.” His voice trailed off into a low-pitched mechanical gurgle, like a tape recorder struggling to play after its plug has been pulled.

  All at once Thirgen's neck gave out, allowing his head to collapse into his body as if he were a child's toy. One last minor fizzle of sparks sprayed out of his body and …

  chsssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh

  … he ceased moving altogether, instantly becoming just as broken-down—and utterly harmless—as the other pieces of machinery surrounding him.

  I turned and stuck my head over the edge of the dock.

  Sure enough, there was Poog, smiling up at me. He'd been with me all along.

  “You made the hurpleskap jump out of the water, didn't you?” I said to Poog once my heartbeat had slowed back down to a reasonable pace.

  Poog nodded.

  “You were able to get him as high as the edge of the dock, but you needed me to throw him the rest of the way.”

  Poog nodded again.

  I paused, smiled at Poog, then did my best to put on an extremely angry face as I shouted loudly enough to send my voice echoing crazily across the water. “Well, what took you so long, you little goof-ball!” Poog made a gurgly sound that may or may not have been Toogolian laughter. “I was dyin' up here!”

  I wanted to ask him how he made me hear words in my head. How he had helped me discover an ear I never knew I had. But something told me those questions were best left unasked, that they were probably even unanswerable. For now, there was only one thing I needed to say to Poog. Something I knew I'd be saying to him again and again.

  “Thank you, Poog.” I took a deep breath, newly grateful for the simple ability to breathe. “Thank you.”

  Poog just smiled and blinked once or twice with his big shiny eyes.

  “A toast to Akiko and Poog,” said Mr. Beeba the next morning, standing up and raising a frosty mug of smagberry cider back at Chez Zoof. “I can think of no heroes more courageous, more selfless, more heedless of danger, more persevering in the face of adversity, more …”

  Touched as I was by Mr. Beeba's effort to honor us, my mind drifted away from his onslaught of adjectives and turned instead to the events of the previous evening. Poog had left me on the pier and returned to find Spuckler and Mr. Beeba back at Thirgen's house. By then they had managed to find Gax's wheels (no small feat: Thirgen had amassed so many that it took deductive reasoning worthy of Sherlock Holmes to be sure they got the right set), and so the three of them returned to the fogglenaut and made their way to the pier to meet up with me and Gax. We all piled in and set sail for Gol-larondo as Spuckler soldered on Gax's wheels and replaced the vital wire that Thirgen had clipped, instantly bringing Gax gloriously back to life.

  We arrived in Gollarondo in the middle of the night and slept in the fogglenaut until morning. Since fogglenauts couldn't fly as Spuckler's ship did, we had to climb an incredibly long stairway to get up to Gollarondo. By the time we reached Chez Zoof, we were all almost ready to collapse from exhaustion. Thankfully, there was a huge table of delicious food waiting for us when we got there, courtesy of none other than Nugg von Hoffelhiff: he'd been following our exploits from afar, and wanted to congratulate us on our success. And that was just for starters. He'd also sent over a brand-new spaceship, identical to Spuckler's in everyway, apart from the fact that it ran better, made less noise, and had not yet begun to rust. “Sissy car,” said Spuckler, trying to conceal his delight.

  “… more fastidious in ferreting out the felonious falsities of a fearsome foe, more dogged in their determination to disrupt the deranged designs of a dastardly—”

  “Hang on, hang on,” I said, jumping to my feet and motioning Mr. Beeba back to his chair. “First things first. We've got to raise a glass to the guy who suffered more through all of this than any of us.” I turned my eyes from Spuckler to Poog to Mr. Beeba, and, finally, to a certain newly reconstituted robot. “Gax.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Spuckler.

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Beeba, after recovering from the indignity of having his toast interrupted.

  Gax raised his head as I cleared my throat.

  “Here's to the best robot in the entire universe,” I said. “May he never again fall to pieces, and may all who cross his path know as deeply and as truly as I do that he is more—much more—than the sum of his parts.”

  Robots don't shed tears, but Gax looked as if he were about to.

  “To Gax!” bellowed Spuckler, splashing all of us with a fresh spray of smagberry cider.

  “To Gax!” we all cheered.

  Mr. Beeba then finished his toast—taking pity on us, he wrapped it up in a mere two and a half minutes—and we all dug in to what was probably the most scrumptious breakfast any of us had ever had. It started with freshly prepared jeelee eggs for everyone and went on and on for several hours, ending only when Spuckler dozed off, his head snuggled up against Gax. Much as I didn't want to speak— or even think—about Thirgen ever again, I knew that we had a responsibility not to leave him there on the pier outside Omega Doy Zarius. I talked it over with Mr. Beeba and we agreed that he should be retrieved and given a thorough reprogramming so as not to go back to his violent ways. Mr. Beeba was sure there'd be no trouble arranging for a search warrant that would allow Thirgen's mountainous excess of necks, heads, bodies, and wheels to be seized and redistributed among robots that truly needed them.

  The remainder of the day was devoted to rest, relaxation, and just generally kicking back and admiring the spectacular upside-down skyline of Gol-larondo. All in all, no one had anything to complain about. Well, except Mr. Beeba, who discovered that the SMATDA had been shut down for emergency repairs when one of its floors collapsed into one of its ceilings. But just between you and me, the fact that the afternoon was going to be devoted to something other than ancient tomes and dusty artifacts only provided another reason to raise a glass of smagberry cider.

  That night Spuckler, Gax, Poog, and Mr. Beeba flew me back to Earth. We arranged to meet the Akiko replacement robot out in the woods near my aunt Lucille's house around two in the morning. She arrived a little late, explaining that Cousin Earl had been up watching his collection of America's Funniest Home Videos tapes and that she'd had to wait for a moment of uproarious laughter to cover for the screechy-hinged door
on the back porch.

  “Just be glad you have robot skin and not real skin,” I told her as she climbed into the ship along with the others. “The mosquitoes are murder out here tonight.”

  I gave everyone hugs and kisses goodbye and made Spuckler promise that no matter what happened, he would never again under any circumstances put a spaceship in Wacahoota Creek. He agreed but first made me admit that it was “pretty darned funny.”

  Gax was the last to board, and before he did, I gave him another little hug.

  “Thanks, Gax,” I said.

  “BUT WHATEVER FOR, MA'AM?”

  “For trying so hard to save me. You know, way back in Gollarondo, when I almost fell off the patio at Chez Zoof.” I patted Gax on the helmet. “That one spontaneous act of bravery nearly cost you your … well, I don't know if life is the right word when it comes to robots.”

  I paused and searched for the proper thing to say.

  It didn't take me very long.

  “Life is the right word when it comes to robots,” I said. “Or when it comes to you, at least.”

  “THANK YOU, MA'AM.”

  “All right, now get on that ship,” I said, “before I take you back to the house and make you watch TV with my cousin Earl.”

  Gax bounced happily on his springs and rolled up the ramp into the ship.

  I stood there in the woods and watched the spaceship rise into the sky until it became indistinguishable from the stars surrounding it. Then I walked back to Aunt Lucille's place and, using the replacement robot's trick of sneaking in during one of Earl's guffaws, tiptoed back to the guest bedroom without anyone seeing. I was so tired I should have just gone straight to bed. Still, there was something I had to get started on. Something that couldn't wait.

  I pulled a notebook out of my backpack, grabbed a pen, and sat up in bed with a bunch of pillows behind my back.

  My name is Akiko, I wrote. You know how whenever something really amazing happens to you, you just can't wait to tell all your friends about it?

  Mark Crilley was raised in Detroit, where his bedroom frequently became so messy that his mother swore everything in it was completely upside down. After graduating from Kalamazoo College in 1988, he traveled to Taiwan and Japan, where he taught English to students of all ages for nearly five years. It was during his stay in Japan in 1992 that he created the story of Akiko and her journey to the planet Smoo. First published as a comic book in 1995, the Akiko series has since earned Crilley numerous award nominations, as well as a spot on Entertainment Weekly's “It List” in 1998. Mark Crilley is also the author of the Billy Clikk series for young readers. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Miki, and their son, Matthew.