Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd (3 page)

He was still
at least sixty feet or so away, but we all got a pretty good look at him. He was six or seven feet tall, with closely cropped white hair and a large squarish head. He had his back turned toward us, so we couldn’t see his face. A green camouflage uniform covered his entire body, making him look like a soldier from some alien army. The uniform had all kinds of weird tubes and bits of machinery attached to it. Every few seconds there was a loud hissing sound, as if steam needed to be regularly released from the uniform for it to function properly.

“Heavens,” I heard Mr. Beeba whisper. “No
wonder
Queen Pwip warned us about this fellow.”

Since Throck had his back to us, it was hard to see what he was doing. It was obvious, though, that he was
working
on something. When he was all done, he stood back and crossed his arms, as if to inspect his handiwork. There in front of him was some kind of signpost. He’d hammered it right into the middle of the road so that it would be clearly visible to anyone coming this way. Something was written on the sign in jagged little letters, but they were too small for us to read.

Suddenly Throck turned until he was almost facing us and took a few quick steps in our direction. A horrified gasp escaped from me, and it felt as if my heart was about to stop beating altogether. I watched, paralyzed, as Throck slowly looked left and right.

His face was wide and white as marble, his eyes small and pale. His mouth was concealed by a black metallic cup with several gray tubes attached to it. Each tube led to a different canister attached to his chest. He was just about the scariest-looking man I’d ever seen.

Once or twice he seemed to be looking in our direction and I was sure he’d spotted us. But then he’d continue looking left and right as if he hadn’t seen us at all. He turned and looked at the sign one more time. Then he walked off the road and into the tall grasses, eventually disappearing into an area of overgrown, weedy shrubs. As he walked farther and farther away, I felt my body relax. My heartbeat slowed back down to normal speed, and it was a lot easier to breathe.

“I’ll be darned,” Spuckler said, raising himself to a squatting position, “if that wasn’t th’ feller Queen Pwip was warnin’ us about.”

“See?” Mr. Beeba replied. “She
was
telling the truth!”

“Well, if that was Throck,” Spuckler said, jumping to his feet, “then I’m a-goin’ after him!”

“No, Spuckler!” I said, grabbing hold of his arm. “Absolutely not. That man is
very
dangerous. I don’t know how I know it,” I added, staring Spuckler right in the face,
“but I know it.”

Spuckler looked at me with squinty eyes and a big frown. He could have kept going. It wasn’t as if a little girl holding on to his arm was going to stop him. But he just stayed where he was.

“Akiko’s right,” Mr. Beeba said, stepping forward. “We have no quarrel with this fellow. Let him go about his business. If we’re lucky, this will be the last we see of him.”

I looked at Poog, hoping for some sign that this really
was
the last we’d see of Throck. Poog just stared back at me with a blank expression.

Suddenly there was a slamming noise, like a car door being shut, followed by the sound of a powerful engine firing up. The noise came from the shrubs where Throck had disappeared a moment before. The ground began to shake, and then, in the blink of an eye, a small spaceship rose out of the grasses and shot up into the sky. It moved so fast that I couldn’t get a good look at it. Spuckler shielded his eyes with his hands as he watched the ship vanish into the clouds.

“That’s right, Throck,” Spuckler said. “Git on outta here.”

After we felt reasonably sure that Throck was gone for good, we all stood up and walked down the hill to look at the sign. It read:

WARNING
: THIS ROAD LEADS TO THE REALM OF ALIA RELLAPOR. TRESPASSERS WILL BE EXPELLED BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY. THIS MEANS
YOU.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Beeba mumbled, examining the dark, scraggly letters with the utmost care. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear!”

“Hey now, come
on
, people,” Spuckler said in exasperation. “It’s just a
sign
, for cryin’ out loud. This ain’t nothin’ to get worked up about.”

Poog’s warbly gurgling voice filled the air. He continued for a second or two, then stopped abruptly. Mr. Beeba began translating almost immediately.

“Poog agrees with Spuckler,” he announced, sounding as he if were surprised that anyone in his right mind would ever do such a thing. “This is indeed just a sign, and we should by no means allow ourselves to be constrained by its directives.”

“Well, thank ya, Poog!” Spuckler said with a big toothy grin. “I knew the two of us’d see eye to eye on somethin’
eventually
.”

Poog smiled warmly. Mr. Beeba grimaced.

We stepped around
the sign and continued walking down the road. I felt much better, but there was still a little knot down in my stomach, a feeling that the danger wasn’t completely gone. Still, it was a great relief to know that Throck had left, at least for the time being.

I tried my best to put Throck out of my mind, but it was no use. I kept wondering who he was. Was he Alia Rellapor’s assistant? What was it about him that made me feel so sick and scared? And was there some sort of connection between Poog and Throck? I had a weird feeling that Poog had seen Throck before, and that he knew all kinds of stuff about him.

The road took us up and over a number of hills, and bit by bit the land began to lose a little of its wildness. The grass became shorter, and there were fewer and fewer weedy-looking shrubs. Eventually we were surrounded by beautiful rolling green hills.

“Good heavens!” I heard Mr. Beeba say. “Don’t tell me that’s the Great Wall of Trudd!” He was pointing beyond the hills to a thin gray line on the horizon. It was so far away that it was hard to be sure it wasn’t just a long band of gray clouds in the distance.

“Wow!” I said, shading my eyes. “It looks pretty big.”

“Big?” said Mr. Beeba. “It’s
enormous
! It must be hundreds of miles long!” He looked as if he was making a mental calculation based on the distance and length of the hazy gray line.

“Come on, gang,” Spuckler said, urging us onward. “We better pick up the pace if we’re gonna get there before the sun goes down.”

Spuckler was right. The wall was still many miles away, and if we walked too slowly it would be dark by the time we got there.

So we continued down the road as fast as we could, taking breaks every half hour or so. Each time we got to the top of a hill, we got a clearer view of the Great Wall of Trudd, and each time, it appeared even bigger than before. We all became so intent on moving quickly that we almost stopped talking to one another. For at least a couple of hours there was nothing but the sounds of me and Mr. Beeba panting, Gax’s wheels squeaking, and Spuckler whistling some strange, almost tuneless melody. Finally, as the late-afternoon sun covered the land with a warm yellow glow, we crossed one final hill and descended a long, graceful slope that led to the base of the wall.

It was huge.
Huger than huge. It must have been about two hundred feet tall, maybe even taller. I have no idea how
wide
it was, since it went off in either direction as far as the eye could see, eventually disappearing over the hills into the haze. One thing’s for sure: There was no way we’d be able to walk
around
the thing.

It reminded me of the Great Wall of China, except it was really different in a lot of ways. I mean, I remember seeing a picture of the Great Wall of China in my history book at Middleton Elementary, and I’d say the Great Wall of Trudd was twenty or thirty times higher. (Not that there’s anything
wrong
with the Great Wall of China. They just could have made it a lot taller, that’s all.)

We all stood there in the middle of the slope, staring at the wall with our mouths open wide. It was built entirely out of roughly cut gray pieces of stone: gigantic boulder-sized ones at the bottom and smaller, flatter ones at the top. There were towers and windows built into it, as if it was a castle and a wall at the same time. Way up at the very top there were rickety old poles with enormous weather-beaten flags waving from them. I half expected to see little soldiers up there marching back and forth, keeping watch over who knows what kind of enemy. But there was also an old, ghost-towny feeling about the place, and it was pretty obvious that no one had actually lived there for years and years.

“Look at all the windows,” I said. “Do you think people used to live
inside
this thing?”

“Evidently so,” Mr. Beeba replied, sounding as if he was about to come up with an elaborate theory on the subject. “Their whole society must have revolved around the maintenance of this wall.”

It was pretty spooky to think of thousands of people spending their entire lives inside this wall. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to them all.

“Well, if they made windows,” Spuckler said, rubbing his jaw with one hand, “they must’ve made
doors
, too.”

“Good thinking, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba replied. “If we can find a door, maybe we can locate some sort of passageway from one side to the other.”

So we walked down the hill until we got closer to the base of the wall and started looking for a door. Spuckler pressed a button on Gax’s body, causing a binocularlike device to pop out from inside him with a loud squeak. Gax positioned the device in front of his eye sockets and began surveying the wall from left to right.

In the meantime Mr. Beeba paced back and forth, mumbling to himself as if he was making a series of very difficult calculations. Poog also seemed to be thinking about something, but he had a distant look in his eyes, as if he was focusing on something else, something many miles away.

“
I’VE FOUND A DOOR, SIR,
” Gax announced after a minute or two of searching. “
IT’S APPROXIMATELY 547 YARDS DUE EAST.
”

“Good work, Gax,” Spuckler said, patting him on the helmet like a proud dog owner. “C’mon, gang. Let’s go check it out!”

So we followed Gax through the overgrown grass and piles of unused stone until we came to a large gray doorway. It was a very grand double-doored entrance, with a large, wide staircase leading up to it. But for some reason it was covered from top to bottom with large boards that had been firmly nailed into place, making it look like an old abandoned house or something.

“Bad luck,” Mr. Beeba said. “We’ll have to keep looking for another entrance.”

“Oh no we
won’t
,” Spuckler declared as he ran up the steps and began tugging violently on one of the boards with both hands. “Your problem, Beeba . . .
rrrgh
 . . . is ya give up on things . . .
nnngh
 . . . too easily!”

KRRRAK!

Off came one of the boards, and Spuckler casually tossed it aside, nails and all.

“Um, Spuckler,” I said cautiously, “do you need any help?” I wasn’t so sure my little arms would make much of a difference, but I thought I should at least try.

“Naw, ’Kiko,” Spuckler answered with a loud grunt. “I ’preciate . . .
arrrgh
 . . . ya askin’, though!”

GRRAAK! BRRROTT! KRRRUK!

One by one Spuckler tore the planks away, throwing them over his shoulder without even bothering to see where they’d land. The more wood he pulled off, the more the door seemed to be bulging outward, as if something was pressing up against it from the inside. It occurred to me that maybe these doors hadn’t been boarded up to keep people from getting
in
, but rather to keep something inside from getting
out
.

“Spuckler!” Mr. Beeba called out, ducking his head to avoid a piece of wood Spuckler had just sent whizzing through the air. “Stop for a moment, will you? I think there’s a very good
reason
these doors have been boarded shut!”

It was too late, though. The doors began to creak and groan, and the last few planks started to crack and pop off by themselves. Spuckler finally got an idea of what was about to happen and slowly started backing away.

“Stand back, everybody!” he shouted. By that time, though, Mr. Beeba and I had already stepped back at least twenty feet or so. Even Gax had wheeled himself away several yards, and Poog was floating a safe distance up in the air. Spuckler leaped out of the way just in time.

BRRRRRRRRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!

All at once the doors flew open and out came an avalanche of stone and sand. Mr. Beeba, Gax, and I continued backing away as wave after wave of the gravelly gray rocks poured out of the doorway, over the steps, and onto the grass. If Spuckler had waited any longer he would have been buried alive!

A minute or two later the last of the rocks came tumbling out, and all that was left was a huge cloud of white dust hanging in the air. Only a tiny sliver of space remained between the top of the doorway and the mountain of stones that had just poured out of it.

“Well, I’ll be gol-
darned
!” Spuckler exclaimed, scratching his head with one hand. “They went and filled the thing with
rocks
!”

“They did nothing of the sort, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba stated authoritatively. “This wall is simply so old it’s disintegrating from within.”

All at once I had an image of what it must be like inside the wall, with every ceiling and floor ready to cave in at the slightest footstep.

“Well, in that case,” I said, adopting my best leaderlike tone of voice, “I don’t want anyone going in there. It’s
way
too dangerous.” There was a moment of silence as we all looked at one another, trying to think of what the next step would be.

Finally Spuckler cleared his throat and spoke.

“The way I see it, there’s only one way we’re gonna get past this thing,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand as he looked up at the very top of the wall, “and that’s by climbin’
over
it.”