Code Lightfall and the Robot King Read Online Free PDF Page B

Finally, Brutus slammed the door shut and stalked away down the hall.
    â€œWhat about in … here?!”
    Brutus yanked open a door to the dining room. He searched behind a pair of chattering, self-shaking salt and pepper shakers. He shooed the four-legged dinner table out of the room and it galloped away with its motors grinding, followed by the chairs. But he found nothing hiding underneath. He tore the metal shutters off the reinforced china cabinet and looked behind the square-, cube-, and hypercube-shaped dishes. Again, nothing. Brutus growled in frustration and stomped off toward the next room.
    â€œMaybe Ratty is in … here?” Brutus leaped into the kitchen and plunged his long, many-jointed arm into the pot of stew.
    â€œStop that, you dim bulb!” said the robot with the female-sounding voice. She wore a dress the size of a circus tent and carried a large, splintery broom.
    Brutus’s small eye visor blinked angrily. “Darla, I am trying to catch a fierce mechano-rat. Lower your volume!”
    While the giants argued, Code seized his chance. He carefully climbed out of the pocket, hung over the side, and dropped to the floor. Luckily, the giants were so focused on arguing with each other they didn’t notice the human boy at their feet. He prayed that the monsters wouldn’t catch and eat him, and that no swinging legs would smear him into a boy-colored paste.
    â€œYou couldn’t catch a cold— Wait.” Darla sniffed loudly. “Brutus, I smell carbon dioxide.”
    â€œCarbon dioxide? What could be breathing oxygen?”
    â€œOnly one creature breathes oxygen …,” murmured Darla.
    â€œKing Lightfall told us to be on the lookout for …,” said Brutus.
    Together, both of the gigantic, savage robots bellowed in pure terror.
    â€œ Hoo-mans! ”
    â€œHow horrid!”
    â€œTheir blood is full of oxygen.”
    â€œIt’s a poison!”
    â€œAnd a narcotic.”
    â€œNot to mention illegal.”
    Code crept past the giants’ primary, secondary, and tertiary legs and hid behind a stack of firewood. In a panic, Brutus and Darla shuffled past Code’s hiding spot and out of the kitchen. As they lumbered by him, the heat from their engines grew to a furnace blast and the noise of the giant robots’ pistons reached an earsplitting roar. Brutus followed Darla out the door, trailing a stale-smelling cape made of glinting silver scales. The cape rattled along the floor, dragged up against the wall, and finally disappeared around the corner.
    At last, Peep climbed out of Code’s shirt pocket. Very, very quietly, the trembling robot made a relieved peep!
    The sound echoed through the crystalline castle.
    â€œWhat what what?” shouted Darla, from the next room.
    â€œWho who who?” shouted Brutus.
    â€œWhy why why?” muttered Code.
    In an earthquake of movement and a tornado of sound, the two giants stampeded back into the kitchen and, heads swiveling, spotted Code.
    â€œIt’s … it’s … really a hoo-man ,” shouted Brutus, apoplectic with the horror of his discovery. “Call the king, Darla.”
    Darla threw one pincered hand over her garishly painted face shield and collapsed in a dead faint, smashing into the nearest wall. Spectacular sconces and moth-eaten portraits of long-rusted robot ancestors collapsed in an avalanche of bad taste. When the rumbling aftershocks had died down, Brutus leaned in to inspect the boy.
    Code smiled nervously into Brutus’s blazing red eye slit. “Sorry I ate your stew.”
    Brutus leaped up and covered his mouth grill with a grease-stained handkerchief. “The hoo-man is made of organic matter. How disgusting!”
    Having recovered, Darla weakly handed Brutus a broom. “Make it hold still! I’ll catch it in a basket!”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that. I’ll just go,” offered Code