The Wild Robot

The current immediately swept Nettle toward the falls. She rolled through the rapids, crashed into one rock and then desperately clambered onto another. RECO 2 stood straight up, and the river rushed around him. He took a step, slipped, and disappeared beneath the water. But then he was up again.

Thorn ran to help his sister, but she was pointing upriver and roaring, “Use the logs!” When the younger bear turned around, he saw what she meant. A jumble of broken logs were wedged between the rocks of the rapids, and a moment later Thorn was on top of them. With water sloshing over his back, he forced a paw between the logs and pried the top one loose. It splashed into the river and wound its way down through the rapids only to roll harmlessly past the robot. Then it dropped out of sight.

The bear tried again. He popped another log into the river, and this one spun just in time to ram its full weight into the robot’s chest. RECO 2 went sailing backward and sank beneath the surface. When he reappeared, the river was full of heavy wooden torpedoes. One log pounded the robot’s shoulder. Another slammed his face. More logs knocked him closer and closer to the falls. The current became too much for the injured robot, and it carried him away. He grasped for anything solid he could cling to. But the rocks were too slippery. So he settled for a fistful of fur.

Nettle had been hanging on to one rock this whole time. But now that the robot was pulling her, she started losing her grip. She couldn’t hang on much longer. Finally, she cried out, “I’m sorry, Thorn!” and she let go.

Nettle and RECO 2 surged toward the rumbling falls. The bear felt the robot release his grip. She watched him glide over the edge. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the end to come.

But it was not Nettle’s time.

Reader, what happened next is hard to believe. You see, the river didn’t fall away beneath Nettle; it tightened around her! Hundreds of fish surrounded the bear! They pressed their faces into her fur. They thrashed their tails against the current. And they slowly pushed her away from the edge. Farther and farther they went, gradually moving upriver, until Nettle’s brother pulled her from the water.

The bears collapsed onto the riverbank. And when they looked down, they saw hundreds of fish looking back up. “Thank you!” roared Nettle. “I’ll never eat fish again!” The fish smiled and sank into the rapids.

“I thought you were dead,” said Thorn, breathing hard.

“So did I.” Nettle laughed. “Looks like you’re stuck with me a while longer… little brother.”

“I’m not little!”

It felt good to joke, but the bears quickly turned serious. They were both bruised and bleeding, and their mother was in far worse condition. However, it would all be worthwhile if RECO 2 had finally been killed. The bears crept to the edge of the cliff. And there, at the bottom of the waterfall, strewn across the wet rocks, was the shattered body of the dead robot.

CHAPTER 73 THE CHASE

RECO 1 was standing in the Great Meadow. He stared up at the smoking hill of ash and then down at the stampede of footprints around it. There had been a large bonfire with hundreds of animals and one robot. But why? The RECO couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

After thoroughly exploring the site, he continued through the meadow and into the forest. It was around that time that he lost communication with RECO 3, then RECO 2, and he knew that his partners had both been destroyed. RECO 1 would have to hunt down the target by himself.

The hunter marched on. His blocky head swiveled from side to side, scanning for any sign of Roz. He was soon gazing across the glassy surface of a beaver pond. On the far side, a thread of smoke drifted up from another of those wooden domes. With his powerful legs, the robot launched himself up through the air, soaring in a high, graceful arc over the pond and down to the other side. His heavy feet slammed into the ground, leaving deep craters in the garden by the dome. He hunched over and looked inside. Fur and feathers and the dying coals of a fire. But the target wasn’t in there.

The RECO stood perfectly still and watched as a soft rain started dripping down through the tiers of the forest. And then he sensed it. Up in the canopy was something that didn’t belong.

Roz had been spotted.

The hunter watched his target drop from branch to branch, down to the forest floor. Then she bounded away through the thickly tangled underbrush without stirring a leaf, without snapping a twig, and vanished into the green. However, RECO 1 had other means of tracking her. He could sense her electronic signal. The signal was gliding around the edge of the pond. But it was fading fast. A few more seconds and he would lose it entirely.