Yok

by Tim Davys

  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.

  Fox 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.

  How 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.

  When 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

  You 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.

  Sometimes 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.

  Octopus Callemaro had expended both money and time on his house in the sky. The best way to picture the result was to imagine a lopped-off variation of the Savings Banks Bank headquarters in Lanceheim, or possibly a shrunken National History Museum, and then exchange brick and masonry for wood and cardboard. It was an impressive but lightweight building Octopus had erected at the top of his tower.

  The furnishings were nonexistent in the outer rooms where stuffed animals of all sorts gathered and stood around, while in the inner rooms it was cozier. The innermost room, where Callemaro took his meals alone, was sumptuous, with wall-to-wall carpet, oak paneling, and a ceiling painting that told the story of the creation of the building. Once a month the octopus invited one of the crew who had particularly distinguished himself—the most brutal, the greediest, the worst—to have dinner with him in this innermost room. It was a gift that all coveted, but few got to experience.

  The gangster boss otherwise had a simple attitude toward his followers: the more, the better. In the innermost circle Octopus counted two dozen loyalists, and beyond that there were just as many who would willingly take part if Dragon Aguado Molina went on the attack. Another couple dozen stuffed animals lived in the building. They hardly knew who Octopus was, even though they exploited his hospitality to avoid the chaos of Sors for a calm time in the sky. These parasites were Callemaro’s best recruitment base.

  Ortega and I came up to the radio tower at midnight, and began the long climb up the apparently fragile ladder.

  “There are thix hundred thirty-thixth thtepth,” I panted. “They thay it wath jutht to annoy me.”

  I knew that Fox Antonio Ortega could have run up the ladder without getting out of breath; he could have gone hand over hand if he wanted to. But he was a considerate animal, and so he rested when I was forced to rest.

  “Do you think I’ll get to meet him tonight?” he asked during one of the breaks.

  “Perhapth,” I speculated. “If he’th in a good mood. We’ll make a try. Whatever it ith you want to thay to him, it’th jutht as well to get it thaid.”

  I was entrusted to the inner rooms. I had worked with Callemaro for more than a year, so when we entered the building I left Ortega to himself. It took a few hours before I was able to set up an audience with Octopus, and during that time the fox investigated the strange building.

  Despite Fox Antonio Ortega’s mental shortcomings he was fascinated, like anyone else who was up in the tower for the first time, by the view. The windows were not equipped with glass or mesh; the large, rectangular holes in the facade were cut directly out of the wall panels. From the top of the tower the labyrinthine street network and the colors of the streets in the illuminated night were silhouetted like a poetic, imaginative pattern in a kaleidoscope.

  Everywhere in the outs
ide rooms there were piles of trash and stuffed animals. The occasional armchair and mistreated sofa testified to a long-abandoned ambition to give the various rooms different functions. Since the stove had broken down, in the big kitchen—which was an extension to the other rooms—three portable butane stoves had been set out on a table. Once a week the pantry and refrigerators were refilled, usually on Monday. The food often ran out the same evening, so there were mostly empty packages on the shelves. From the three toilets there was a horrible stench because no one ever cleaned up after themselves.

  Fox Antonio Ortega was not spoiled, but even he felt uneasy about how things were organized in this building.

  When late that night Ortega was granted entry to the inner rooms, he was surprised at the difference. There were three living rooms in a row and a corridor bordered by bedrooms, where I lived among others, and things were very nice for us. Fifteen of us shared a well-equipped kitchen and two smaller bathrooms. Even if we were not meticulous, we kept our things in order. The octopus was careful not to soil the wall-to-wall carpets, made sure the oil paintings on the walls stayed free of burn marks, and ordered that we drink our liquor out of glasses. For Callemaro the image of success was important, and he associated it with a certain degree of manners and cleanliness.

  Fox Antonio Ortega was led into the end living room, where Callemaro as usual was enthroned in his black leather armchair. I do not think the fox had any expectations, but like everyone who met Octopus for the first time, he must have wondered why the gangster was dressed in a tuxedo, why he wore all those clumsy—if glittering—ruby rings, and why he had a white silk scarf around his head. The answer was vanity. Octopus’s most prominent attribute and most powerful motivating force was vanity. It had taken him all the way up the radio tower, and it would take him farther than that.