Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd

by Mark Crilley

  “Spuckler,” I asked, gazing up at the thousands of stars twinkling above us, “are there other planets out there like Smoo?”

  “Oh, sure,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Most of ’em are pretty weird, though.”

  It got very quiet. I thought I could hear the sound of the sea, the waves lapping up on the shore hundreds of feet below us. It could have been just the wind, though.

  “Spuckler,” I asked, “are you scared of that guy Throck?”

  There was a very long pause.

  “Maybe a little,” he said finally. “But I won’t let him scare me out of rescuin’ the Prince, that’s for sure.”

  There was another pause. I heard a flag flapping in the wind somewhere far away.

  “Neither will I,” I said before closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep.

  When I woke up it was cold and the sky was grayish pink. I pulled my flag-blanket around my body as tightly as I could and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t, though. I suddenly realized how hungry I was. After all, it had been almost a whole day since we’d had anything to eat.

  I rolled over and found that Spuckler and Mr. Beeba were already awake. They were sitting near the edge of the wall, having a heated debate. They were whispering, but it was still a debate.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Mornin’, sleepyhead!” Spuckler said with a smile. “Hope we didn’t wake ya.”

  “No, Spuckler, you didn’t,” I said, sitting up straight and stretching my arms out as far as they would go. “It’s time for me to get up anyway.”

  “GOOD MORNING, MA’AM,” I heard Gax say with a cheerful squeak.

  I turned to find Gax and Poog just a few feet behind me.

  “Good morning, Gax. Good morning, Poog,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Boy, I sure am hungry.”

  “You ain’t the only one,” Spuckler said, rubbing his belly vigorously. “I reckon I could eat a whole stack of Bropka steaks right now if I had the chance.”

  “Yes, well, we’re all quite famished, to be sure,” said Mr. Beeba, “but sadly, there’s not a scrap of food among us, so we’d best not dwell on the matter.

  “We were discussing,” Mr. Beeba continued, “the manner in which we are to descend to the bottom of the wall.”

  “What’s to discuss?” I asked. “We’ll just have to tie ourselves together and climb down the same way we came up.”

  “My thoughts precisely,” Mr. Beeba said, apparently very relieved to find me on his side of the argument. “Spuckler, however, has this outlandish notion that—”

  “I think we oughta parachute down,” Spuckler interrupted, hurrying over to me, full of enthusiasm. “I figure one of these here flags is just about big enough for the job. Why, if it works we’ll be able to drop down there as gentle as a feather on a breeze.”

  “See?” Mr. Beeba said to me, as if Spuckler had just offered proof of his own insanity.

  “A parachute?” I asked, trying to stay open-minded.

  “Here,” Spuckler explained, picking up one of the smaller flags he’d taken down from a pole the night before.

  “Oh, goody,” Mr. Beeba said sarcastically. “A demonstration.”

  “These here pieces of junk will represent you ’n’ me ’n’ Beebs ’n’ Gax,” Spuckler continued, removing four small pieces of metal from inside Gax.

  “SPARE PARTS, SIR,” Gax said.

  “Huh?” Spuckler asked.

  “I PREFER THE TERM ‘SPARE PARTS’ TO THE TERM ‘PIECES OF JUNK,’ ” Gax explained, sounding slightly offended.

  “Oh. Right,” Spuckler said. “Spare parts. Sorry about that, ol’ buddy.”

  Gax clicked and buzzed his approval.

  “Just you watch,” Spuckler said excitedly, tying the four pieces of metal to the four corners of the flag. “This is one of my best ideas yet.”

  A moment later he was done.

  “Course, this is just a model,” Spuckler continued, carrying his creation to the edge of the wall. “The real thing’ll be even cooler.”

  Raising a finger in the air to see which direction the wind was coming from, Spuckler twisted his body back and hurled the flag up into the air. The wind rushed underneath it and raised it up at the center, while the four metal weights pulled it down at each corner. Slowly and gracefully, Spuckler’s little handmade parachute floated over the edge of the wall and down toward the coast. Mr. Beeba and I watched in amazement while Gax popped and sputtered with pride. Poog smiled and said something in his gurgly language.

  “Poog says”—Mr. Beeba translated with some hesitation—“Poog says it’s a splendid idea.”

  “Well, hot dang,” Spuckler laughed. “Me ’n’ Poog seem to be agreein’ on most everything these days.”

  “Hmpf!” Mr. Beeba groaned. “Well, I suppose the idea does have its merits.”

  Spuckler ran off in search of the largest flag he could find. Eventually he came back with one that looked as if it would be just perfect. It was about twenty feet square and had just a few small holes around the edges. Spuckler tied one corner of it to Gax, grabbed hold of another corner himself, and instructed me and Mr. Beeba to take the other two corners. Poog observed the whole process with a look of curiosity and amusement.

  We then walked carefully over to the edge of the wall and agreed that we would jump on the count of three. The only problem was we couldn’t decide what jumping on the count of three actually meant.

  “Look, it’s easy,” Spuckler said with an air of exasperation. “I’ll say ‘one’ then ‘two,’ and then when I say ‘three,’ we all jump.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Beeba said, adjusting his spectacles, “but do you mean that we should jump as you are saying the word ‘three,’ or just after you say the word ‘three’?”

  “I think he means as he is saying the word ‘three,’ ” I said. “Right, Spuckler?”

  “I don’t even know what neither of you two are talkin’ about!” Spuckler cried.

  “It’s a perfectly clear distinction—” Mr. Beeba began.

  Suddenly a strong gust of wind swept under the flag and began carrying us up into the air. Mr. Beeba and I struggled to stay in place.

  “The wind is too strong, Spuckler!” I shouted as the flag lifted my feet off the surface of the wall. “It’s going to knock us over the edge!”

  “That’s the whole point, ’Kiko!” Spuckler called back to me as he allowed himself to be swept away. “Go with the flow!”

  Within seconds all four of us were carried up into the sky, with Poog floating along behind. The flag billowed up like an enormous mushroom, then gradually began to descend toward the sea below us. I stared in amazement at the entire length of the Great Wall of Trudd as the four of us dropped bit by bit, slowly circling around and around like a spinning umbrella.

  “We’re. . .” Mr. Beeba gasped, his face overcome with an astonished smile. “We’re flying!”

  “Admit it, Beebs,” Spuckler called across to him, “you’re havin’ fun, aren’t ya?”

  The entire descent took about a minute and a half. Finally we dropped right down into the waters of the Moonguzzit Sea, the flag settling into the waves like an enormous deflating beach ball. We all got soaking wet (well, all of us except Poog, that is), but fortunately no one got hurt. We made our way back to the shore, pulling the flag along with us.

  “I say, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said with a great big smile, “that was very clever of you, considering you’ve never studied the laws of aerodynamics.”

  “I make it a rule never to learn about stuff that’s hard to pronounce,” Spuckler replied. “Makes my head hurt.”

  We all agreed to rest up a little before beginning our trek across the bridge. Spuckler sat down and gave Gax a little tune-up. Mr. Beeba and Poog took a quiet stroll along the coast. Me, I just collapsed happily on the beach, closed my eyes, and waited for my blue jeans to dry in the morning sun.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later, when Poog and Mr. Beeba cam
e back from their walk, we took our first steps onto the long stone bridge.

  The design of the bridge was quite simple. It was about twenty feet wide, with four-foot walls on either side that served as guardrails. It appeared to be built out of the same stone that had been used to build the Great Wall of Trudd, except it looked even older and more weather-beaten.

  There was enough space for all of us to walk side by side, though Spuckler tended to be out in front just because he walked so much faster than the rest of us. I kept looking off into the distance, at the spot where the bridge disappeared into the horizon like railroad tracks. I was checking to see if we would come across another one of Throck’s signs, or even Throck himself. Fortunately, there was nothing to see but miles and miles of bridge.

  “You know, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said as we walked along, “you’ve never told us much of anything about your home planet, Orth.”

  “Earth,” I quietly corrected, trying not to embarrass him.

  “Yes, of course,” he said with a cough. “So what’s it like on, um, Errrth?” The way he said it made it sound like a whole different planet somehow.

  “Oh, it’s pretty cool, Mr. Beeba,” I said. “You all ought to come and visit me someday.”

  “We’d be delighted to,” Mr. Beeba replied eagerly.

  “Are there all kinds of weird monsters and stuff?” Spuckler asked, sounding like a schoolboy with an overactive imagination.

  “No, Spuckler,” I answered. “Well, at least none that I know of.”

  “Hmm,” Spuckler replied with a yawn. “Sounds kind of boring.”

  “ARE THERE ROBOTS, MA’ AM?” Gax asked. “LIKE ME?”

  “Oh yeah, we’ve got loads of robots on Earth,” I told him. “But not like you, Gax. Why, I’ll bet there’s no other robot like you in the entire universe!”

  “Got that right,” Spuckler said, his face glowing with pride.

  Gax buzzed and squeaked happily.

  Poog made a short gurgly sound, which Mr. Beeba translated as “Do you miss your parents?”

  What a question!

  I remembered the time my parents had to go to some sort of conference or something in Michigan. It was a school night, so there was no question of my going with them. They ended up having me stay the night at the home of one of my mom’s friends, Mrs. Powell. At first I thought it was pretty cool, but then for some reason all the little stuff started to bother me, like the greasy chicken Mrs. Powell cooked for dinner and the weird collection of ceramic frogs she kept in her bathroom. I think I even cried a little before I went to sleep. All I wanted was to be back home with my parents.

  Things were different now, though. For one thing, I was two or three years older. And sure, I still missed my parents a lot, but I also felt very important here on Smoo. I knew that Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Gax, and even Poog . . . I knew they all needed me for some reason. It was a slightly uncomfortable feeling sometimes, as if I was having to be a whole lot more responsible than I really wanted to be. But it was also a good feeling, as if I was getting the chance to become a slightly different kind of kid.

  “Yeah, Poog,” I finally answered. “I miss them. I miss them a lot.”

  Spuckler and Mr. Beeba turned to me with concerned looks on their faces.

  “I know I’m going to get to see them again, though,” I continued, “just as soon as we’ve rescued Prince Froptoppit.”

  “You betcher boots ya will,” Spuckler said with a smile. “I’ll take ya right back home myself if I have to!”

  “Good heavens!” Mr. Beeba interrupted with an expression of great surprise. “There’s a building up there!”

  He was right. It was still just a tiny speck in the distance, but it was clearly visible. A building. Right in the middle of the bridge!

  As we got closer the details of the little building became easier to see. There was a big rotating sign on top, just like you’d see at a gas station, with a strange symbol on it that looked like a word in Arabic or something. The building itself was no more than thirty or forty feet square, with a perfectly flat roof and dark-tinted rectangular windows, some of which were cracked and partially boarded up. The bridge had been specially widened to make space for the structure, and a dozen or so raggedy little flags fluttered from poles that circled the building. There were even a couple of little garbage cans, cylindrical ones with beat-up silvery covers that squeaked noisily in the wind. All in all, I’d say it looked pretty much like a roadside diner you might find somewhere outside of Middleton, an old place that had seen better days. Much better days.

  “Smudko’s!” Spuckler said, sounding as if he’d died and gone to heaven. “Well, I’ll be dad-gummed!”

  “Here?” Mr. Beeba asked, his eyes open wide in disbelief. “Impossible! They never requested a building permit!”

  I didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about.

  “Um . . . what’s Smudko’s?”

  “It’s an intergalactic chain of restaurants, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba explained as we continued walking toward the building and its lazily rotating sign. “Atrocious food. Strictly a dining alternative of last resort.”

  “Don’t listen to him, ’Kiko.” Spuckler said, licking his lips in anticipation. “There ain’t nothin’ like a Smud Burger. Heck, two or three of ’em would go down pretty good right about now!”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said, walking up to one of the windows and wiping away the soot to look inside. “Clearly this place was abandoned years ago for want of patrons.”

  “Why would they build a restaurant out in the middle of this bridge?” I asked. “There aren’t any customers around for miles. I mean, come on. What did they expect?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba replied, wiping an even larger section of the window clean with his gloves. “I suspect it was some sort of bureaucratic error. The Smudko’s Corporation got so big that at one time they were opening restaurants at the rate of one thousand a day. Mistakes were bound to happen.”

  Gax wheeled himself over and joined Mr. Beeba in checking the place out. Spuckler seemed more interested in locating the front door, which he did in a matter of seconds.

  “Whatchew guys waitin’ for?” he called to the rest of us, pulling the door open with a prolonged rattling squeak. “C’mon, let’s go inside already!”

  One by one we entered the old restaurant, stepping cautiously across the floor while our eyes adjusted to the darkness. The first thing I noticed was how clean the place was. I mean, it was really old and almost falling apart in certain spots, but there was hardly any dust anywhere. There were about a dozen circular tables, each with six chairs arranged neatly around it and little metallic napkin dispensers set carefully in the center. There was a kind of bar at the back with round padded stools lined up in front of it and a long shiny footrest underneath. The air smelled nice and clean, with just a hint of cooking oil or something like that.

  “Well,” Mr. Beeba muttered to himself, “they certainly left the place in good condition. I’m rather surprised that they forgot to lock the door, though.”

  “I’m not so sure this place is really abandoned, Mr. Beeba,” I said, pointing at the smooth, shiny tabletops. “Somebody’s been in here tidying this place up.”

  “Let’s hope it’s someone who knows where the food is,” Spuckler said, still licking his lips hungrily.

  “MY ACOUSTIC SENSORS ARE DETECTING SOME SORT OF AUDITORY DISTURBANCE,” Gax reported, turning his head from left to right like a satellite dish.

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  “Hush, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba whispered, raising a cautious finger in the air. “We need to be absolutely silent in order to catch it.”

  A minute or two went by as we all stood there, trying our best to hear what Gax had picked up. Only Poog continued moving, floating noiselessly through the air as he inspected the strangely well-kept room.

  Then I heard it. Coming from back behind the
bar was a . . . breathing sound. It was low and husky and very, very slow.

  Spuckler signaled to us that he would go check it out by himself. Mr. Beeba and I nodded vigorously and stayed right where we were. I tried to imagine what would make such a sound and couldn’t decide if it was a human or an animal or something else altogether.

  Spuckler stepped as quietly as possible over to the bar and took a peek behind it.

  “Hmpf!” he snorted, sounding as if he was more amused than frightened by what he saw. He grinned and motioned for us to come over and join him.

  Mr. Beeba, Gax, and I went across to the bar and, looking behind it, saw a middle-aged man with a bushy black mustache and a big potbelly, sound asleep in a comfy armchair. He had his arms draped across his chest with his fingers neatly laced together and his legs propped up on a big tin can placed carefully in front of him. That breathing sound we’d heard was now clearly a quiet, steady snore, and I had to cover my mouth to stop from giggling. He looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a hot dog salesman in a baseball stadium.

  “Who is he?” I whispered to Mr. Beeba, still trying hard not to laugh.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Beeba whispered back. “He must be an employee of the Smudko’s Corporation.”

  Sure enough, he was wearing a T-shirt and a little paper cap, both of which bore the same curious symbol that I’d seen on the restaurant’s sign outside. His face looked so peaceful, I wondered if we shouldn’t just turn around and tiptoe back outside.

  Spuckler would have none of that, however.

  “Hey, pal!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice bouncing off the walls and filling the entire room. “You’re sleepin’ on th’ job!”