Yok (6 page)

Hamster opened the menu. She liked variety, and
tried to remember what she had had the last time.

“The salsicca, maybe?” she said.

Schleizinger immediately raised a claw and signaled
to the headwaiter that they were ready to order. He was in a hurry; work was
piling up at home and he didn't want to be too late.

It took less than an hour to finish the appetizer
and entrée. Over coffee they discussed the intensifying struggle against the
gang leaders in Sors, a program they had launched jointly six months earlier,
and which had already borne fruit. The Ministry of Finance had placed expanded
resources at their disposal, and Hamster maintained that she felt they were
close to a breakthrough. But suddenly she interrupted herself, and nodded toward
the window.

“That fox on the other side of the street, is that
anyone you know?”

Schleizinger controlled himself. He refrained from
twisting his head, and instead leaned directly toward the bodyguard sitting
closest.

“Contact Smithson,” he said. “Say that the fox is
back. Outside Au Sultan. And before you start chasing him, I want him
surrounded. He won't get away this time.”

The bodyguard nodded, got up slowly, and went over
to the kitchen to place the call. Schleizinger, meanwhile, let Hamster in on the
situation, and together they continued conversing as they had their coffee,
careful not to change body language or in some other way worry the fox, who was
patiently hiding in the shadows on the sidewalk across from the restaurant.

Fifteen minutes after Police Chief Hamster noticed
him, the fox was surrounded without his knowledge. There were animals inside the
building where Fox was standing in the doorway. They had entered via the
courtyard and waited for a signal. Farther up on the street stood twenty-two
riot police hidden in a nameless, colorless alley never intended for anything
other than drainage, and in the other direction two police vans showed up.

At Smithson's command the prosecutor's and the
police chief's twelve bodyguards stood up inside Au Sultan and went as a group
to the door. Antonio Ortega realized that he was exposed. He saw the police vans
parked a block south as the door behind him opened.

He had no plan when he started running. Planning
was not his strong suit. The street was blocked to the south by the police vans,
so Fox ran north. There the riot squad appeared from the alley, and formed a
wall with their shields.

“Now we've got him,” said Schleizinger, who along
with the police chief was standing in the window observing the drama.

As Fox Antonio Ortega continued running toward the
riot police, neither the prosecutor nor the police suspected mischief. It was a
desperate action in a tight situation, and even though they both witnessed what
happened, they could hardly believe it.

Fox kept running; the riot squad got into
formation, a single stuffed animal on his way toward a wall of heavily armed
police officers. The situation was so peculiar that no one thought about the
fox's speed. It was only afterward that someone said they had never seen a
stuffed animal move so quickly. The riot police worriedly drew their weapons.
When little more than five feet remained between the fox and the wall of police,
some of the officers maintained afterward that they had seen the mattress
abandoned by a garbage can. The next moment the fox used that same mattress as a
launching pad and flew over the police wall with a good margin.

The jump was nine feet high and twenty-six feet
long. The whole thing was over in a few overwhelming seconds, and the fox
continued running along the street while the riot squad clumsily turned around
and gave chase. Hawk Schleizinger knew only too well how this race would
end.

“Unbelievable,” said Manuela Hamster.

“Depressing.” Schleizinger sighed.

“Fox Antonio Ortega, you said? No record? No
criminal connection?”

“His father is in jail, accused of lottery fraud,”
Hawk replied. “But that's not much to go on.”

“I want to recruit him,” interrupted Hamster, who
had not been listening.

In the car on the way home Hawk Schleizinger
considered his options. That Fox Antonio Ortega was after the chief prosecutor
was obvious, as was the fact that the fox would not give up. But what did he
want? Among the furious, embarrassed, and frustrated emotions that sojourned in
Schleizinger's chest, he discovered a feeling of curiosity, which surprised him.
For once it felt important to find out the fox's underlying motives. The
prosecutor nodded to himself. That's how it was. The whole thing was so strange
that he wasn't reacting reasonably. Which in a way was logical. And because he
was a very logical animal, he felt satisfied with that conclusion.

F
ox
Antonio Ortega did not show up on the surveillance monitor until midnight that
night. By then Hawk Schleizinger had already been waiting an hour. The chief
prosecutor had put on his nightclothes, and stared intently at the screen as he
grabbed the phone and gave Smithson the order.

“Don't do anything!”

Without waiting for the security chief's protests
he hung up, tied the sash of the robe tighter around him, and left the house
through the terrace door. He crossed the lawn on the back side, and used the low
iron gate to make his way onto the street.

The fox was standing in the shadow of a tall maple
tree that had grown up from under the asphalt of the sidewalk. Even though the
prosecutor crossed the street with determined steps, the fox remained quiet and
expectant.

Cars stood neatly parked along the sidewalk on the
street in Amberville and the glow from the nearest streetlight made the
prosecutor's beautiful silk robe glisten. Otherwise the night was completely
still.

Schleizinger knew that Smithson and the security
force were watching him in frustration from inside the house. When he had a few
feet left to Ortega he stopped.

“I am Hawk Schleizinger,” said the prosecutor.

“I know,” Fox Antonio Ortega replied.

“I know you know,” the prosecutor snapped. “I'm
introducing myself to show a little common courtesy.”

“Oh. Excuse me. My name is Fox Antonio Ortega,”
said Fox.

“I know that, too,” the prosecutor said. “I'm the
prosecutor in Sors in Yok. What do you think of me? I have more enemies than all
my enemies have combined. Of course I've found out who you are. Why are you
following me?”

“I want to talk with you. But I didn't know what to
do.”

“Talk with me? What kind of stupidity is this?
You're lying. Schedule a meeting? Couldn't you just call, in that case?”

“But I have,” Fox explained. “I've called your
secretary dozens of times. But when I didn't want to reveal my business, she
refused to let me speak with you. Or see you.”

“But why didn't you knock on the door? Like an
ordinary, civilized stuffed animal?”

Hawk indicated with one claw the hawk's house on
the other side of the street. “I thought about that. But your guards came
running as soon as I tried.”

“That's natural, with the case against your father
on its way up in the court.”

Fox Antonio Ortega looked perplexed. “Dad? What has
he done?”

“You didn't know?”

“No.”

“He's accused of lottery fraud.”

Fox considered this and found no reason to dispute
it. Silence fell between them.

“So what is your business that you didn't want to
tell my secretary?” Hawk Schleizinger asked at last. He was starting to get cold
in his pajamas.

“I've been given a task,” said Fox Antonio Ortega.
“In order to marry the bird I love, I have to give her father one of your
feathers.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was wondering if I could have a feather?”

“Is this all about a childish bet?” Hawk
roared.

“Not a bet. More of a test, I guess. And it's not
childish. What I feel for Beatrice I have never felt for anyone else,” Fox
answered. “For her I would do dumber things than this.”

The chief prosecutor stood silently and stared at
the beautiful fox. Then without further ado he plucked a feather from his belly,
gave it to the fox, and quickly returned to the house, where a warm bed
awaited.

H
ow
do we know this feather is Schleizinger's?” Vasko Manatee asked.

Instead of being happy about Ortega's feat, Dragon
Aguado Molina and his bodyguard both seemed irritated.

“You have my word,” a wronged Fox Antonio Ortega
replied.

He was shocked by the suspicion. The thought of
acquiring a white feather and pretending it was Hawk Schleizinger's had not even
occurred to him. Fox was again standing before the dark violet dragon in the
restaurant; the Weather was in the middle of the day but here it was dark.
Beatrice Cockatoo was not to be seen. Molina yawned and showed his terrifying
jaws, nodding at the same time. “It's Hawk's feather. It's all over town.
Everyone knows he gave it to you yesterday.”

Fox nodded. Vasko snorted.

“But the feather means nothing,” Dragon Aguado
Molina continued. “The next task is to get an arm. I want one of Octopus
Callemaro's arms. He has eight of them, so he can surely spare one for you.”

“Octopus Callemaro?” Fox repeated.

“Good luck,” said Vasko Manatee.

Then he burst into laughter, and Molina joined
in.

W
hen
Fox Antonio Ortega left, Molina looked contentedly at the feather. He was
starting to get close to Chief Prosecutor Schleizinger, and with each passing
day more time and money was required to keep him and the police away from
business they had nothing to do with. The dragon was certain that the chief
prosecutor's self-confidence was behind his growing successes. Schleizinger did
not fail at anything, and the power that created was worrisome. Stuffed animals
around him were starting to think he was invincible. Which in turn made them
harder—and more expensive—to handle.

For that reason, that afternoon Aguado Molina
burned half of the hawk's white feather and put it in an envelope that he
addressed to Schleizinger's secretary, to be sure that the rumor about this
letter and its threatening contents would be spread at the court and within the
Sors police organization. It was not to frighten the prosecutor that the dragon
sent the letter; it was to show that the chief prosecutor was also a stuffed
animal—neither more nor less.

 

The Arm

Y
ou mutht
put thith on,” I said to Fox Antonio Ortega. “You do underthtand that? Ath a
dithguith?”

My name is Gary. I am a dark beige vole with a gray
belly and ears that are barely visible. I have lisped my entire life, I no
longer consider it a handicap, but certain stuffed animals have a harder time
hearing what I say than others, and Fox Antonio Ortega has always had problems
understanding. That's not just because of my lisp.

“Mutht I?” Ortega repeated.

It was there and then I entered into the story in
earnest. We were in a narrow alley that reeked of rotten cabbage and grease. On
both sides red, sooty brick walls vanished up into the black sky; in the
electric plant behind my back there had once been an assembly shop, before the
auto industry moved to north Lanceheim. I had to speak loudly over the clatter
from a restaurant kitchen farther away, but no one could hear us.

“Ath a dithguith,” I repeated. “They would get you
right away. Thinking you are alive. They will see you're not one of them. Put
thith on now, and thith cap.”

Fox shrugged his shoulders and squeezed into a
gray, full-length coat with a worn-out lining. Someone had spilled a can of
brown paint across the back. He tied it around himself with a simple belt
because the buttons were missing. The cap I pressed onto his head was so large
it not only concealed his ears, it also shadowed his beautifully shimmering
eyes.

“Tie it like thith,” I instructed, showing how the
belt should sit. “No one careth if thomeone new thowth up. There are new oneth
all the time. With the coat you'll look like one of uth.”

“Of uth?” Antonio Ortega wondered, but obediently
followed my advice and tied the big coat that concealed his lovely fur around
him.

“Are you thure you want thith?” I asked nervously,
as we walked toward the radio tower. “Octoputh can be . . . thurly
thometimeth.”

“Thurly?”

“I'll help you, of courth,” I assured him. “I don't
really know what you're up to, Ortega, but all the better.”

“It's no secret,” the fox answered. “I want one of
Octopus's arms to give to Dragon Aguado Molina in exchange for his
daughter.”

I laughed. “I don't remember you as being tho
funny,” I said. Because I could not believe that Fox was speaking the truth, I
was convinced he had something else in mind and was just joking.

S
ometimes you may get the idea that we stuffed animals in Yok have made
it a matter of honor to eradicate the traces of Mollisan Town's civilization in
our part of the city, but that's not true. We were practical, and only destroyed
the things we didn't need. Partly for that reason we let two of the original
four radio towers remain standing. Two towers were enough, one in Sors and the
other in Corbod, for cell phone and TV and radio signals to penetrate every
wall.

Octopus Callemaro had located his headquarters at
the top of one of the towers, but he had been careful; he didn't want to be the
one who made
Wheel of Fortune
stop spinning in the
idiot boxes in the living rooms of Yok on Friday evenings. The reason he chose
this unusual place was that in his teens he read stories from the Middle Ages,
when Amberville, Lanceheim, Tourquai, and Yok were independent cities in
constant war with one another, and learned the value of a high location for a
headquarters so as not to be surprised or surrounded. There was no building in
Sors higher than the radio tower.