Michael Cooper
Homework
Robot Space Castle
Gritperil Book 1
Homework
Jaron Gritperil was making a lot of mistakes. He was trying to erase one of these without going all the way through his paper when the alarm began to sound.
Erasing a mistake is a difficult thing with only one arm. Jaron wasn’t missing an arm, not exactly, but one was robotic. It had a mind of its own, and was busy trying to steal Jaron’s cellphone. Yes, of course he had a cellphone. This was the future, if that makes sense, and pretty much everybody had cellphones in the future.
When the alarm began to sound, Jaron left his homework, and filed out with everybody else in the castle to gather in the courtyard just outside. It wasn’t a drill, that was obvious from the nervous looks, and the quiet conversations. Grownups always seemed to know when alarms were drills.
It turned out to be a false alarm, which was very much like a drill, except that nobody planned it. The Prince had apparently been startled by a shadow in his room. He’d been nervous lately, and had freaked out. Everybody tried to calm him down, but the Chamberlain, who was a careful man, had suspected an assassin. It was the Chamberlain who’d sounded the alarm.
The castle guard had been through every room, and nothing had been found. The delay wasn’t that big a deal, but now Jaron was late, and he was shivering from the cold, and he was trying to get his homework done so he could go to work. The Chamberlain was standing over him being terribly impatient, and he was making more mistakes than he knew what to do with.
Eraser in hand, Jaron tried to coax his arm to hold his paper still without talking to it. He didn’t like people to hear him talking to his arm, least of all the Chamberlain. At least his arm had given up its attempt on Jaron’s cell phone. It didn’t like the Chamberlain any better than Jaron did.
Exasperated, Jaron dropped one of his few remaining paper clips onto the page and his arm settled in beside his latest mistake. He furiously erased the mistake while his arm settled in to consume the clip. It had to eat, how else could it grow? Jaron didn’t see why it had to eat so much!
[Pic]
The Chamberlain flatted out the salted black band that remained of his hair and started clicking his pen. The sound was so imposing that Jaron couldn’t even concentrate on his erasing. He looked up, and was on the point of asking the Chamberlain to please be quiet, when the Chamberlain cleared his throat and said,
“Those theorems aren’t even useful. You’ll never use them.”
Jaron didn’t know what to do. It was obvious the Chamberlain wished him to quit his studies, and to get to work without delay. His job wasn’t supposed to interfere with his studies, but the alarm had put everything behind, and the Chamberlain was an extremely impatient man.
Jaron could appreciate this position, to a point. The Queen’s Chamberlain must surely have more important things to do than see to the testing of the Prince’s toys.
But Jaron didn’t want to leave his work unfinished. There would be questions about it tomorrow. His grandfather told him that his studies were important, that means were sometimes greater than the ends they seemed to serve. Whatever else that meant, it seemed to mean that homework must be done.
And yet there had been times when he had gotten notes for class time missed, or homework incomplete. Sometimes his Aunt had taken him in for dentistry or clothes.
In the curious way our minds can pass from thought to thought, he now remembered something he had seen on his last trip to the city. A display in a toy shop window had caught his eye and stilled his heart. The Shrieking Sherlock was out. It had been all the talk for months, but seeing one for real was more thrilling than a snow day.
It was reasonable to expect the castle staff might have bought one for the prince, and that it would be waiting on the giant table in the Prince’s antechamber for Jaron to unbox. He turned to meet the Chamberlain’s in the eye.
“I’ll need a note,” he said, and started gathering his things.