Jurassic Carp

by Mo O'Hara

  Suddenly we heard Sebastian’s voice echo across the field. ‘Guinevere, yield!’

  If Sebastian was unzombified too, that could only mean one thing. Frankie must have been knocked out. Or worse . . .

  ‘Good girl,’ Sebastian’s voice said. Guinevere was immediately calm. ‘I’ve got you, guys,’ he added. I could feel a tug on the reins. ‘Are you all right in there?’

  ‘I’m OK. Are you, Pradeep?’ I asked.

  ‘Urgh . . . I think I feel horse-sick,’ he moaned.

  ‘Sebastian, where’s Frankie?’ I said. ‘We need to get him back into water right away!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sebastian said. ‘The Knight Night’s horse had a bit of a fright when her rider started popping and fizzing. She jumped over the arena barrier and headed for the moat. We can hide behind the stands so I can get you off Guinevere and out of the armour. Then we can look for Frankie together.’

  Less than a minute later Sebastian removed the helmet and undid the armour to release me and then Pradeep, who was looking pretty green from the horse-sickness by now. As soon as his feet hit the ground, we raced after the crowd that was heading for the moat, with Sebastian leading Guinevere behind us.

  ‘What hast happened here?’ Motley Fool was shouting as we arrived at the drawbridge. We could see the Night Knight sitting in the moat with the water up to his chest. He wasn’t moving but a stream of smoke trickled out of his visor. His horse was standing next to him, having a drink.

  The medical team from the castle had already waded into the water and were carefully pulling off the Night Knight’s helmet. The crowd gasped when they couldn’t see a head inside, only a fizzing circuit board.

  Motley Fool scratched his head, making his jingly bells jingle even more. ‘Those boys and the Knight-Mare were right!’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘I’ll see to the Night Knight’s horse,’ Sebastian shouted, and whistled to her. She calmly walked up the bank and let him take her reins. ‘I’ll get her back to the stables. Can you keep an eye on Guinevere?’ he added as he passed us.

  Pradeep nodded while I looked around for Frankie, scanning the water, the bank, the drawbridge, everywhere, for a speck of orange. ‘He must be in the moat,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘Unless he fell out of the visor as the Night Knight rode over here,’ said Pradeep. ‘Then he could be anywhere.’

  Just then we heard little footsteps behind us on the drawbridge. ‘Swishy fishy sleepy,’ Sami interrupted. ‘Look!’

  Inside her pointy princess hat was Frankie, floating in some muddy water.

  ‘Where was he, Sami?’ I asked.

  ‘Swishy fishy flopping in puddle.’ She looked down, ‘But then he got sleepy.’

  ‘He needs food,’ Pradeep replied.

  Just then Guinevere nudged me with her nose. She was carrying a paper bag in her teeth. Inside were her sugar cube treats. I dropped a couple of green ones into the water in Sami’s hat and Frankie perked up right away.

  ‘Thank goodness!’ I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Suddenly Pradeep nudged me – we could see the top of a pointy hat hidden behind a low wall nearby. ‘Sanj and Mark,’ he whispered. We crept closer.

  ‘So you didn’t think to make the mega-robot waterproof?’ Mark shouted.

  ‘I don’t see you coming up with any amazing technological advancements – so you can zip it!’ Sanj shouted back.

  ‘Exactly! A giant zippy bag! How hard would it have been to make a giant waterproof zippy bag for the electric stuff inside the suit!’ Mark screamed. ‘And I really wanted to take over the world with a bunch of robot knights too. Man! This rots!’

  ‘Wait,’ Sanj interrupted Mark’s rant. ‘The camera! You’ve been videoing the whole thing. We have proof of the Night Knight’s powers and we have the blueprints. We can build it again. Where is the camera?’

  By now we were right next to the wall.

  ‘Ummm . . .’ Mark began. ‘I videoed the final joust . . . and then when the robot started to smoke and the horse ran off, I put it on my seat under my hat and ran over here.’

  Sami peeked over the wall. ‘Me got camera!’ She smiled and pulled it out of a pocket in her princess outfit.

  Sanj and Mark turned to look up at us in surprise.

  ‘No, Sami!’ Pradeep shouted. ‘They need that to win the Evil Scientist Magazine Evil Robot competition!’

  ‘Too late,’ Sanj said, jumping up and snatching the camera from Sami’s hands.

  ‘Yeah, too bad, morons!’ said Mark, and laughed his evil laugh.

  Sanj pressed ‘play’. Then he froze. ‘What is this?’ he asked. He held up the camera screen, which was showing a video of Sami fighting pretend dragons with her pointy princess hat. ‘Where is the footage of the Night Knight?’

  ‘It was on there!’ Mark said. ‘I had the arrows and the boulder and everything.’

  ‘She must have recorded over it.’

  ‘I make movies, yaaaaayyyy!’ Sami giggled.

  ‘At least we still have the blueprints,’ Sanj muttered.

  ‘About those blueprints,’ Sebastian interrupted, walking up to us with Guinevere by his side. ‘I found them in the armour that the t boys used in the joust.’

  ‘Wait, it was you in the joust just now?’ Mark stared blankly at us.

  ‘And Frankie,’ Pradeep said as Frankie jumped up out of Sami’s hat and splashed Mark in the face.

  ‘Blech!’ Mark spluttered.

  ‘The blueprints are with the competition officials now,’ Sebastian continued. ‘And they really want to speak to you about your robot.’

  ‘No way!’ Sanj stomped his foot.

  ‘Ah, here they are,’ said Sebastian with a smile, motioning to two burly officials who were walking our way.

  ‘Don’t even think about running, Mr Wizard and Lord whatever-your-name-is,’ the first official said.

  ‘Let’s go and find your parents and have a word, shall we?’ said the second. They took Mark and Sanj away, still sniping at each other.

  We could see Mrs Kumar hurrying over to the officials. She waved at Pradeep and shouted, ‘Pradeep my lovely, look after Sami, will you? Your brother has got himself into a pickle again.’

  Motley Fool walked up to join us. ‘The Night Knight hath been disqualified. Therefore the honour of Knight of the Tournament falls to you,’ he said to Sebastian. He paused and squinted down at me, Pradeep and Sami. ‘And your, er . . . squire . . . ?’ he trailed off.

  Sebastian whispered something to the fool.

  ‘An excellent suggestion,’ Motley Fool nodded. ‘Let us make haste!’

  As we walked back towards the castle courtyard, we bumped into Mrs Richards. She did not have her happy history face on now.

  Sebastian stepped forward and grabbed her hand, giving it a kiss. ‘Fair lady, thank you so much for letting your students help me . . . er . . . tend to my horse, Guinevere, during this strangest of tournaments. May I borrow them for a few moments more? I am sure they’ll have much to tell their class when they return to school.’

  Mrs Richards blushed. ‘I suppose so. As long as it’s historically pertinent.’ She swept off to count the rest of the peasants.

  ‘Right, then,’ said Sebastian, turning to us. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

  As we entered the courtyard the crowd cheered and clapped and the trumpets sounded – but this time we weren’t sitting on a wall or stuck in a tower. We were sitting on the back of a tall majestic horse – Sami, Pradeep and me, with Frankie in Sebastian’s helmet filled with water. Sebastian led Guinevere along and she high-stepped proudly through the crowd.

  Mrs Kumar was waving to us from the stands, while Sanj and Mark – who were now dressed in medieval prison clothes – stood next to her scowling.

  We were so excited that we almost didn’t see the ball of fur and claws as it shot through the air, aiming straight for Frankie!

  ‘Fang!’ Sami, Pradeep and I all shouted.

  But we should
n’t have worried. With one swish of her long tail, Guinevere thwacked Fang out of the way and into a barrel of water next to the medieval prisoners.

  Mark pulled her out and dried her on his prison smock. ‘This is the worst!’ I saw him mutter.

  ‘Raaaaoooowwwwlll,’ his soggy moggy mewed back.

  When we got to the front of the courtyard, Motley Fool jingled his bells for silence. ‘The honour of the Knight of the Tournament is to be bestowed upon Sir Knight-Mare and his squire Pra-tom, who alas can’t be here for reasons one doest not fully comprehend,’ he shouted. ‘In Pra-tom’s stead, we have the Knight-Mare’s three assistant squires, with their mascot of, er . . . ’ He peered into the helmet. ‘A golden fish!’

  ‘What do we get?’ I whispered to Sebastian. ‘A medal?’

  ‘A trophy?’ Pradeep asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’ Sebastian smiled.

  Motley Fool reached into a jewelled box in front of him and pulled out . . . a flower! Each of us got a different colour. Apparently that was the custom for tournaments.

  Sami seemed pretty pleased with hers.

  ‘Our mums will like them, I guess,’ I grumbled to Pradeep. ‘But what will Frankie do with his?’

  ‘I don’t think we have to worry about that,’ Pradeep said as Frankie wiped the last green rose petals from his mouth and let out a satisfied burp. ‘I think he likes this kind of reward.’

  We sat in the crowded room and waited.

  ‘How long is this talk?’ I whispered to my best friend Pradeep.

  ‘You can’t possibly be bored!’ he whispered back. ‘It hasn’t even started yet.’

  A lady in a white science coat stepped on to the stage in front of the audience. The crowd in the school auditorium started clapping – and she did that weird thing where the person who is being applauded mouths ‘Thank you’ over and over and bows a little – even though there’s a microphone so she could just as easily have said thanks.

  ‘Is she somebody important?’ I whispered slightly more loudly.

  Pradeep continued clapping as he answered. ‘That’s Dr Lorna McDoom. Renowned archaeologist and palaeontologist.’

  ‘And is she somebody important?’ I asked again.

  ‘Do you actually mean, “Did she star in a movie I’ve seen? A video game I’ve played? Or invent something I couldn’t live without, like cheese puffs?”’ Pradeep whispered back.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Did she invent cheese puffs?’

  ‘No,’ Pradeep replied, ‘but she is really, really important in the world of digging up dinosaur bones.’

  That, to Pradeep, was the same as saying she was the top of the Premier League for most other kids. ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘I’ll shut up.’

  Just then the scientist spoke into the microphone. ‘Thank you so much for your enthusiastic welcome to Parkside Primary School!’ she lilted in a thick Scottish accent. The applause died down and she continued. ‘It’s a pleasure to be here with you to share this new discovery which I think is truly . . .’ She paused.

  ‘EPIC!’ the word burst out of Pradeep before he could stop it. His hands clapped over his mouth a second too late and his face turned red as the audience turned to see who had spoken.

  ‘Mwah haa, hee, hee, hee!’ Dr McDoom giggled. ‘Well, I’ll take your word on that, young man.’ She smiled at Pradeep. ‘Epic,’ she repeated.

  Pradeep released his mouth and started to breathe again.

  ‘Did you hear her laugh?’ I whispered to Pradeep.

  ‘I was concentrating on disappearing into the floor,’ he answered. ‘So no.’

  ‘It’s just . . . she sounded kinda ev—’

  ‘Now,’ interrupted Dr McDoom. ‘I have some slides to show you that chronicle the excavation of the dig site here on the grounds of this very school.’ She squinted into the audience towards the janitor at the back of the hall. ‘Could you please turn off the lights?’

  The school janitor, who is probably the slowest man in the world (snails on zimmer-frames could actually outrun him), reached for the light switches. Slowly the room started to fade into darkness.

  ‘Any time now, thank you.’ Dr McDoom tapped her fingers on the podium. The audience sighed.

  Eventually all the lights went out.

  ‘Sorry . . . there’s still a green light on in the audience. Could you turn it off please?’ Dr McDoom asked.

  It was only then that I realized that Frankie, my pet zombie goldfish, who was hidden in a water bottle on my lap, had popped open the lid to take a look at the slide show. His eyes were glowing a fierce zombie green.

  I threw my jacket over the bottle to hide the glow.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dr McDoom continued. ‘Let’s begin.’

  While she showed the first couple of slides, Pradeep gave me a look that I thought said, ‘Seriously, Tom, why did you buy Frankie a luxury face swill?’

  I responded with a look that said, ‘A what what?’

  I squinted through the dark to see Pradeep give me his ‘pay attention’ look, followed by a look that said, ‘Why did you book Frankie on a luminous fuse crawl?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’ I whispered.

  ‘I said, “Why did you bring Frankie to a lecture on fossils”?’ Pradeep whispered back.

  ‘Oh,’ I said out loud. ‘That makes much more sense.’

  ‘Shhhhh!’ the person behind us tutted.

  ‘Well it’s a good thing I did bring him,’ I whispered to Pradeep, ‘because Frankie obviously senses that something is wrong. His eyes only glow green when he senses danger.’

  ‘He probably just saw the white science coat and thought of Mark,’ Pradeep whispered back.

  I was about to answer when I realized that Pradeep was probably right. Frankie has hated my Evil Scientist big brother Mark ever since he dunked him in toxic gunge and tried to flush him – so it made sense that when he saw a white coat, he would literally go green with anger. Or at least his eyes would.

  I looked down and realized that while we were talking, Frankie had chewed a hole in my jacket so he could see out. Mum was going to kill me. She was already mad that there were green food stains on practically everything I wear from scavenging green snacks for Frankie. He has a thing for green food, the grosser and slimier the better.

  Frankie’s eyes had stopped glowing, but he was definitely still interested in Dr McDoom. The slide she had up on the screen was of a large skeleton, about the size of a small car, that was found under the school car park while they were digging foundations for a new science block. It was definitely a fish. It looked kinda . . . I don’t know . . . prehistoric, with big sharp teeth and huge eye sockets.

  ‘With computer modelling and my knowledge of the fish of this era,’ Dr McDoom continued, ‘the next slide reveals how we think this prehistoric fish, which we believe is from the Jurassic period, would have looked . . .’

  The next slide came up and the room went silent.

  That is, except for Pradeep and me.

  ‘Frankie?’ we both mumbled.

  The image on the slide was exactly like a giant, prehistoric version of Frankie, but with a kind of dopey look on his face.

  Frankie looked at Pradeep and then at me. Then he did an impression of the dopey prehistoric fish.

  ‘Argh!’ I yelled.

  Pradeep quickly threw his coat over my holey jacket to hide Frankie.

  ‘Ah-ha!’ he shouted and punched the air to cover my yell. ‘That is also EPIC!’

  Dr McDoom smiled. ‘I think so too,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll take Frankie out before he causes a scene,’ I whispered to Pradeep. I stood up and started to make my way to the back of the hall while Dr McDoom kept talking. ‘This is, of course, a computer-generated image. But what if it was within our power to make this fish real?’

  I could see Pradeep sit up in his seat to listen closer.

  ‘In addition to the bone and rock we found with the specimen, we also found traces of DNA material, that if sequenced and splic
ed correctly with a host species, could be cloned into a form of this majestic animal that swam these shores some one hundred and fifty million years ago. The closest living relative to this specimen of prehistoric fish is the common carp or modern goldfish. Just imagine the possibilities if we could bring back an animal that time forgot?’

  The audience started to murmur. I don’t think they liked the idea of bringing the giant fish back to life and neither did Frankie. He was thrashing around like mad under the jackets, trying to get out of his bottle.

  ‘Of course, I am only speaking hypothetically!’ Dr McDoom added.

  By now, Pradeep had joined me at the back of the hall. Before I even had a chance to ask, he said, ‘It means that she’s just asking “What if?” – not that she’s actually going to try to do it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, nodding. ‘I knew that.’

  By now Frankie had chewed through Pradeep’s jacket as well as mine and looked ready to jump out of the bottle and throw himself at the projector.

  ‘We better get out of here,’ I whispered to Pradeep.

  ‘I just want to hear this end bit,’ he said.

  ‘In conclusion, I think we should be opening doors in science, not shutting them.’ Dr McDoom pointed to the slide again. ‘Even if it means that this is what’s behind one of the doors.’

  She laughed again at her own joke, but this time it was a full ‘Mwhaaa haaa haaa haaa!’ that my Evil Scientist big brother Mark would have been proud of.

  Pradeep and I headed out of the auditorium while everyone clapped. Just as we got to the exit, we looked back and saw Mark approach the stage. What was he doing here at our school? And on a Saturday?

  My lip-reading skills are pretty good but from that distance all I could make out was, ‘I think we have the same ideas about science. And I think I know where you can get the perfect . . .’ Then Mark turned away and I couldn’t see what he was saying any more.