Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd (4 page)

Spuckler took charge
of the climbing plans, with Mr. Beeba as the self-appointed naysayer. I sat down and rested on the grass while the two of them bickered about how best to scale the wall. Finally they came up with a plan they could both agree on. Sort of.

“First thing we gotta do is tie ourselves together,” Spuckler said, pulling a large quantity of rope from a compartment inside Gax and tying one end of it around his own waist. He then tied the middle of the rope around my waist and handed the other end to Mr. Beeba, who tied it around himself as best he could.

“This way if one of us falls, the other two can pull ’im back up,” Spuckler explained in a tone of voice that was probably supposed to reassure us.

“Sounds like a recipe for
disaster
, if you ask me,” Mr. Beeba moaned.

“You prefer goin’ it
alone
, Beebs?” Spuckler barked, squinting angrily.

“Er . . . maybe I need to tie this knot a little bit
tighter
,” Mr. Beeba whimpered, busying himself with the rope.

Meanwhile, Gax had produced three suction-cupped legs, which allowed him to scale the wall almost effortlessly. He scampered up and down the wall for practice, making a series of little popping sounds as he did.

“Wow, Gax,” I said. “You’re better at going up walls than any of us!”

“
IT’S NOTHING SPECIAL, MA’AM,
” Gax replied modestly. “
MOST ROBOTS OF MY GENERATION ARE CAPABLE OF WALL CLIMBING. THESE SUCTION CUPS WERE INSTALLED AT THE FACTORY, AS A MATTER OF FACT.
”

I tried for a moment to imagine the factory where Gax had been built. It must have been a pretty interesting place.

“Now, there’s just one rule b’fore we start,” Spuckler said, staring first at me, then at Mr. Beeba.
“Don’t look down
. It’ll make ya dizzy.”

The two of us nodded and tugged nervously at the rope, checking it once more.

Finally it was time to start climbing. Spuckler took the lead, I went next, and Mr. Beeba was underneath me at the bottom end of the rope. Gax followed Mr. Beeba, and Poog just sort of floated alongside us, two or three feet from the wall.

Before long we were almost thirty feet from the ground. Then forty. Then fifty. The stones were cut very roughly, so there were plenty of little ledges to hold on to. At certain points it was no harder than climbing a steep flight of stairs. At other times it was a lot trickier than that. There was one spot where most of the wall was covered with a damp, greenish yellow moss, and every time I thought I had a solid footing my shoes would suddenly slide off to one side, leaving me clinging by my fingertips.

Spuckler definitely could have climbed a lot faster if he hadn’t been tied to me and Mr. Beeba. As it was, he forced himself to go very slowly. He also called down little warnings to us as we went along, like “It gets a little steep up here, ’Kiko!” and “Watch out for the loose rocks over here on the right, Beebs.”

The higher we went, the stronger the wind became. Every once in a while a powerful gust would whistle past and I’d find myself digging my fingernails into the wall with all my might. My skin was becoming all goose-pimply and I started to get a weird, queasy feeling in my stomach.

“Come on now,” I said to myself. “You can
do
this. Don’t be a baby.”

I tried not
to look down, but I couldn’t help myself. I really wanted to see how high up we were. Once I snuck a quick glance down and was amazed to see how far away the ground looked. I could see the doorway with all the rocks piled in front of it, but now it looked really tiny, like the entrance to a toy castle.

It reminded me of the time my parents took me to the top of this supertall building in Chicago where I could look out the windows and see all the tiny little people and taxicabs and stuff hundreds and hundreds of feet below me. Only now I didn’t have a big, thick piece of glass to look through.

When we reached a spot seventy or eighty feet from the ground, Spuckler practically
ordered
me to stop looking down.

“I’m tellin’ ya, ’Kiko: Ya gotta keep your eyes on the wall in front of ya,” he said in a very stern voice. “It’s the only way t’ keep yourself from gettin’ dizzy.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Beeba added, for once agreeing with Spuckler, “if you keep looking down you’re going to get a nasty case of vertigo. Trust me, Akiko. I’m highly susceptible to dizzy spells myself!”

I knew they were right. I promised myself to stay focused on the climbing.

By this time we were nearly a hundred feet up in the air. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and getting in my eyes. I probably should have asked Spuckler and Mr. Beeba to stop so that I could take a rest, but I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of weakling or something. So I just kept going, reaching up to one stone and then another, pulling myself up again and again until my whole body ached.

A minute or two later I accidentally cut my arm on a sharp piece of rock sticking out from the wall.

“Oww!”

It was a pretty bad cut. I stared with surprise as bright red blood began to run down my forearm.

“You okay, ’Kiko?” Spuckler asked, turning his face toward me to see what had happened. For some reason I turned my arm away so that he wouldn’t be able to see the blood. I guess I just didn’t want him to worry about me too much.

“Are you hurt?” Mr. Beeba asked, looking up from where he was a few feet below me.

“Don’t worry, guys,” I replied, trying my best to sound casual and unconcerned. “I just scraped myself a little. It’s nothing.” There was a weird little quiver in my voice, though, and suddenly my head felt . . . I don’t know,
cloudy
or something.

I looked up and was relieved to see the top of the wall coming into view. I could even hear the flags up there, flapping like crazy in the wind.

“See, ’Kiko?” Spuckler called down to me. “Just another fifty feet to go. Sixty, tops.”

“Sixty, tops . . . ,” I repeated, surprised by the faraway sound of my own voice.

Now I really
was
feeling dizzy. I looked over and saw Poog at my side. He was hovering just a foot or two from my head with a very concerned look on his face. I had to blink over and over to keep him in focus.

“Akiko!” I heard Mr. Beeba say from a few feet below me. It sounded as if he were miles away. “A a a r e   y o o o u   o - k a a a y ?”

Suddenly everything looked very fuzzy, and I felt as if my whole body were spinning. For some reason I found myself doing the very worst possible thing I could have done at that moment. I turned my head and looked straight down.

All I could see was a big yellow blur in place of Mr. Beeba, and there, miles below him, a strangely beautiful cloud of green.

One by one I watched my fingers let go of the wall.

“ ’K i i i k o h h h,” I heard Spuckler’s voice, but it sounded as if he were calling from the top of a mountain. “N o o o o o o o o o o o o o . . .”

I felt my body tumbling through space for a second or two before suddenly being yanked very roughly. Then everything went black.

When I opened
my eyes the world was upside down.

My face felt very warm, and my arms were dangling above my head. Or
below
my head, rather. You see, Spuckler’s safety measures had succeeded: I was now hanging upside down, with my feet all tangled up in the rope. I was about ten feet below Mr. Beeba and Spuckler, who were both holding on to the wall with one hand and pulling on the rope with the other.

“C’mon, Beebs!” I heard Spuckler say. “Put some muscle into it!” Together they were drawing me back up the wall, inch by inch.

“I’m trying, trying!” Mr. Beeba replied with a grunt.

“Hold on, guys,” I said feebly. “I’ll try to get my legs untangled.”

I wasn’t feeling so dizzy anymore, but my face was burning hot with all the blood that had rushed to my head.

“Don’t move, ’Kiko,” Spuckler said urgently. “We’ll getcher feet untangled in a second. First let’s try’n getcha turned the right way around.”

Spuckler was stretching his arm down to get hold of my leg, but I was still a few inches out of reach. He pulled a little harder on the rope to bring me farther up the wall.

BBRRRRRRUMMMMM!

There was a horrible crumbling sound, and all at once the section of the wall Spuckler was holding on to completely gave way. A million bits of rock and sand came pouring down, and Spuckler scrambled desperately not to fall.

But it was no use.

With one final clawing motion of his arm, Spuckler completely lost balance and fell helplessly through the air. I watched in disbelief as he rocketed down past me, the coil of rope connecting the two of us going from taut to loose in a split second. Then the rope snapped around my ankles as the full weight of Spuckler’s body yanked down on it. Fortunately my blue jeans were thick enough to protect me from what would have been a
really
nasty rope burn!

Now the climbing order was completely reversed: Spuckler was on the bottom, I was in the middle, and Mr. Beeba was on top, holding on to the wall with all his might. For a terrible second or two, poor Mr. Beeba was forced to support the weight of all three of us!