Jurassic Carp

by Mo O'Hara

  ‘Mark!’ I shouted. ‘Be careful!’

  But once again the lake was still and the giant fish was nowhere to be seen.

  In seconds Mark was with Fang. He scooped her up and put her on his head so she was out of the water. ‘I’ve got muddy water in my eyes,’ he gurgled. ‘I can’t see which way to swim!’

  ‘Hang on, Mark,’ I shouted. I grabbed one of the life rings that hung by the waterside and threw it as hard as I could. It got kind of near Mark but not close enough to grab. ‘I’m going to have to jump in,’ I said to Pradeep.

  Just as I started to take off my trainers Pradeep pointed again. ‘Look! It’s Frankie.’

  Frankie’s eyes were glowing again. We could just see him in the murky water, swimming out and under the ring and then dragging it over to Mark. Mark put the ring around himself and then he paddled, and Frankie pulled them back to the side of the lake.

  I scooped Fang off Mark’s head and Pradeep wrapped her in his jacket to warm her up. Then I put Mark’s Evil Scientist coat over his shoulders. He sat on the ground as Pradeep handed Mark the jacket with Fang balled up inside.

  ‘You stupid crazy evil kitten,’ Mark said stroking her head. ‘What did you do that for? You’re the best evil pet in the world. No stupid fish could replace you.’

  Fang mewed gently and rubbed her head against Mark’s hand. Then she bit him hard on his finger and slashed at Pradeep’s jacket to get free. ‘OW!’ yelled Mark. ‘Yup, that’s my little evil kitteny-witteny.’

  Fang shook out the water from her fur and crept over to where Frankie was panting in a puddle of water inside the life ring.

  ‘Watch out—’ I started to say, but instead of attacking him, Fang coughed up the most disgusting green slimy pond scummy hairball I’ve ever seen and nudged it with her nose towards Frankie.

  ‘He’s not really gonna—’ Pradeep started to say, before Frankie gulped it down in one and burped a satisfied burp at Fang. ‘That is the most revolting peace treaty I’ve ever seen,’ he added.

  ‘He is a zombie goldfish,’ I said. ‘They’re not known for their table manners.’

  Just then, Dr McDoom strode over to the holding area and looked at the scene.

  Her evil assistant was soaking wet and sitting on the floor next to a goldfish in a life ring and a very wet and grumpy kitten. Oh yeah, and me and Pradeep were trying to look like all this was perfectly normal.

  ‘Hi, Dr McDoom,’ Pradeep said, using his best ‘talking to a teacher’ voice.

  ‘Don’t you “Hi, Dr McDoom” me. What’s going on?’ She said. ‘Wait, you’re the boys from the swimming pool? What are you wearing?’ she added as Pradeep’s glittery cupcake-and-panda outfit sparkled in the sun. ‘Wait, and that’s the host specimen, isn’t it?’ She looked around and saw that the rope that was supposed to be holding up the barrier net had been shredded. ‘Mark, what on earth happened? Where is our “special discovery”?’

  Mark stood up. ‘It’s out there.’ He pointed at the reservoir. ‘The stupid moron dino-fish nearly killed Fang.’

  ‘He was provoked,’ Pradeep added.

  Mark glared at Pradeep.

  ‘The dino-fish can’t be announced to the world!’ I stood in front of Dr McDoom. ‘We won’t let you use that fish to carry out any more of your evil plans!’

  McDoom threw her head back and laughed a full-on Evil Scientist ‘Mwhaaa haaa haaa haa haa!’

  ‘My . . . mwhaaa . . . evil . . . mwhaaaa . . . plans?’ she gasped between laughs. ‘What on earth are you . . . mwhaa haa haa haa . . . talking about?’

  ‘We know you’re an Evil Scientist,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘But what could possibly have made you think that?’ Dr McDoom wheezed, her laugh finally under control.

  ‘Well . . . there’s the white coat,’ I said.

  ‘Doctors wear white coats too,’ she said. ‘Are they evil?’

  ‘And the evil laugh?’ Pradeep said with a frown.

  ‘Och! That’s just the way I laugh. You should have heard my nanna. She sounded like a proper fairy-tale witch when she heard a good joke.’ Dr McDoom smiled. ‘What else?’

  ‘Well . . . there’s your name,’ I said. ‘McDoom is pretty evil-sounding, don’t you think?’

  ‘Totally,’ Mark said. ‘But . . . like . . . in a good way.’ Fang hissed up at Dr McDoom.

  ‘It’s an old highland family name. From the clan McDoom. It goes back centuries. Ach, is that all you’ve got?’ She put her hands on her hips.

  ‘That and the fact that you’ve been working with Tom’s Evil Scientist big brother, you fish-napped our pet goldfish to experiment on him, and you created a car-sized monster dino-fish which you’re going to use to take over the world,’ Pradeep said. ‘But mostly the other stuff.’

  Dr McDoom looked over at Mark and raised an eyebrow, ‘You’ve been pulling my leg then, young man.’

  Mark looked down at the floor.

  ‘You lied and said the fish was yours when it was really the pet of these two wee boys,’ she said sternly and quietly. ‘You really want to be an Evil Scientist . . . not a research scientist. And you want to use the prehistoric fish I cloned to take over the world!’

  Mark kept staring at the floor. ‘Maybe?’ He shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, he did.’ Pradeep and I nodded.

  ‘Miiiaowwww,’ Fang agreed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, boys!’ Dr McDoom said, turning to us. ‘I had no idea.’ She crouched down and looked at Frankie swimming around in the puddle inside the life ring. ‘I’m sorry, little fishy. I shouldn’t have used your genetic material without your permission. I shouldn’t have frozen you, and I’m glad to see you have survived unscathed.’

  Then she looked back at us. ‘But I’m not evil. I just wanted to show the scientific world what was possible. You see, I believe if we are better able to understand the wildlife of the past, we’ll be better prepared help the wildlife of the present.’

  ‘But what really happened was you made a giant, scary fish, and no one knows what to do with him!’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Where is the fish now!’ Dr McDoom suddenly said, snapping to attention. ‘He can’t look after himself. We need to find him.’

  ‘I think I know a way,’ I said, and looked down at Frankie.

  Just then we heard a completely familiar but completely unexpected sound.

  ‘Heeellllloooo, loovvveeellyyy!’ Pradeep’s mum called across the water. Sami’s backpack bounced behind her as she skipped towards us in her swimsuit and her taped-up green rubber ring.

  ‘Mum?’ Pradeep mumbled.

  ‘Sorry my errands took me so long,’ she said, and then she gave Pradeep a big and embarrassing hug. ‘You look so cute in Granny’s outfit.’

  As she pinched his cheeks Pradeep mumbled, ‘Muuuum. Not in front of the scientist. Please.’

  I was right in the middle of giving Pradeep a look that said, ‘Wow, shame about your mum giving you a mega-embarrassing hug,’ when Mrs Kumar grabbed me and hugged me too.

  ‘I could get Granny to send over a T-shirt for you too, Tom,’ she cried. ‘Then you boys could match.’

  Mark burst out laughing and Fang even sniggered a little ‘Mmmeeew, meeww, meeww!’

  Dr McDoom stepped forward. ‘Hello, I’m Dr McDoom. We met earlier at the school.’ She shook Mrs Kumar’s hand. ‘Mark, why don’t you take Fang and get dried off while we figure out what to do about . . .’ She paused. ‘Our little problem.’

  Mark picked up Fang, still sniggering as he headed off towards the van.

  ‘Your son and his friend were just about to help me with a little science project,’ Dr McDoom went on. ‘Would it be all right if I borrowed them for a wee while?’

  ‘Me help too?’ Sami jumped up and down.

  ‘All right, you can stay with Pradeep and Tom but no going in the water,’ Mrs Kumar said. ‘I’m going to go over and see what all the fuss is, over by that stage at the other end of the lake.’

  As soon as Mrs Kumar was gone
I turned to Dr McDoom. ‘Sami has a kind of special connection with our pet goldfish,’ I told her. ‘I think she’ll be able to help us.’

  I scooped up Frankie into his water bottle and handed it to Sami. She stared into his glowing green eyes and a moment later she was staring up Pradeep’s left nostril with one eye and at the side of the van with the other.

  ‘Did that goldfish just hypnotize that little girl? Extraordinary!’ Dr McDoom stared at Sami and Frankie.

  ‘Swishy little fishy,’ Sami mumbled. Then she got a strange look on her face . . . as if she was talking to Frankie in her head.

  ‘Swishy fishy can’t understand big swishy fishy talk,’ she said. ‘Big fishy talk in pictures. And “uggy uggy” sounds. No words.’

  Sami pulled her crayons and paper out of her backpack and started drawing really fast. It looked like a cave painting – but of us and the dino-fish!

  ‘Amazing! She’s using prehistoric pictorial communication techniques to interpret for the fish,’ Dr McDoom said, looking closely at Sami’s drawing.

  Pradeep looked over at me and was just about to translate the science language when I said, ‘Sami is drawing what the fish has to say, right?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said with a grin.

  Sami drew a picture of the dino-fish looking sad in a box. Then she drew another picture of him looking happy in big blue space. Finally she drew a green rubber ring, green seaweed and Frankie’s green zombie eyes, and a picture of the dino-fish licking his mouth like he was hungry.

  ‘So the dino-fish wants to eat green things. Like Frankie,’ Pradeep said. ‘That must be why he tried to get Sami’s green rubber ring. He wasn’t trying to eat her, just the ring.’

  ‘And that must be why the dino-fish only chased Frankie when his eyes were glowing green. He must have thought he was food!’ I added.

  Sami blinked several times and shook her head. ‘All done!’ she said, and smiled.

  Frankie broke off eye contact and dropped back into his water bottle with a splash.

  ‘Was your goldfish just . . . talking through her?’ Dr McDoom sat down on the side of a fence and scratched her head.

  ‘I wouldn’t want that moron fish in my head.’ Mark smirked as he walked up to us, drying his hair with a towel.

  Frankie glared at Mark.

  ‘I think the feeling is mutual,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Frankie and the dino-fish did look like they were communicating in looks before the dino-fish swam off with Fang. That must have been when Frankie found out all that stuff!’ I said.

  Dr McDoom looked out at the water in the reservoir and then over at Sami. Then she turned and looked at all the reporters and scientists gathered for her announcement. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘I can’t subject the dino-fish to a life in a tank being poked and prodded . . . but I can’t just let him loose either.’

  Sami tugged on the hem of Dr McDoom’s white coat. ‘Dino-fishy need babysitter?’ she asked.

  Dr McDoom smiled down at Sami. ‘That’s exactly right!’ she said. ‘If I can follow the dino-fish in the wild I can look after it and also study its behaviour.’

  ‘So . . . no taking over the world? No evil plans at all?’ Mark grumped. ‘Oh, man!’ Fang sat smugly in Mark’s pocket sharpening her claws on her teeth.

  ‘Now, Mark, I’m counting on you to help with this,’ Dr McDoom said.

  ‘Oh come on!’ Mark groaned as Fang jumped out of his pocket, hissed and started drawing with her paw in the dirt.

  ‘I think your evil kitten is giving you an ultimatum, Mark,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘A what?’ he said.

  ‘She’s saying it’s the dino-fish or her,’ I said.

  Fang mewed and nodded. We looked down at her drawing. It was a fish with a big cross through it.

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll help get rid of the dino-fish.’ Mark sighed, and Fang jumped back into his pocket, purring loudly.

  ‘Dr McDoom,’ Pradeep said. ‘I think I have an idea for how you can escape with the dino-fish and avoid all the reporters and scientists.’

  ‘We’re going to need Frankie to do some acting for this one, right?’ I added.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Pradeep said. ‘Frankie, can you do your dino-fish face again?’

  Frankie did the same expression as when Dr McDoom first showed the slide of the dino-fish in the school auditorium.

  ‘Amazing,’ breathed Dr McDoom. ‘That’s one very special goldfish you have there. OK, boys, let’s get to work!’

  The first thing we needed to do was get the dino-fish in on our plans. Frankie jumped into the water and turned up the green brightness of his eyes as high as he could. In a flash the dino-fish was there. Frankie quickly let his eyes return to normal while Sami drew pictures of the plan and showed each of them to the giant fish.

  ‘Dino fishy like pictures,’ Sami said. She patted the enormous fish on the head. With a splash the dino-fish lifted up his front fin and patted Sami on the head in return.

  ‘And he learns fast, too,’ Pradeep said. ‘Are you ready, Frankie?’

  Frankie turned and gave us a fins-up sign.

  Next, we scooped Frankie back into his bottle so he could zombify Sami again. If everything went to plan, she would hopefully be able to communicate a little bit with the dino-fish in her head.

  Finally, behind the cover of the giant windshields, Frankie jumped into the enormous tank that Dr McDoom had ordered to transport the dino-fish to the stage area, which was then covered with a large black sheet. A mobile crane that was normally used for moving boats picked up the tank and rolled slowly towards the stage at the far end of the lake.

  Before she walked over to the stage, Dr McDoom gave us a pair of binoculars and some clip-on microphones and earpieces so she could communicate with us.

  ‘I use these for my public speaking engagements all the time,’ she said. ‘But I never thought they would come in useful for secret escape plans!’ She smiled and allowed herself a little ‘Mwhhaa haa hee hee’ laugh. ‘This is exciting, really.’

  The cameras were all switched on and the reporters stood at the ready as the crane put the tank in place and Dr McDoom took to the stage.

  Meanwhile, we had to get the dino-fish across the entire length of the reservoir while the press conference was going on – without being seen. At the far end there was only a metre or so of land between the reservoir and a local river that then led out to sea.

  ‘The best way to be unseen is actually to be seen,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Hunh?’ Mark, Sami and I said at the same time.

  ‘What if we ride the dino-fish across the reservoir?’ Pradeep smiled.

  ‘I knew all your smart brain cells would dry up eventually. You’ve totally lost it,’ Mark said.

  Then a little light bulb went off in my brain.

  I took the water sports centre flyer that Sami was still gripping in her hand and looked at the picture of the kids on the banana boat on the front.

  ‘Pradeep’s a genius!’ I said. ‘No one will look at what we’re riding! They’ll just see some happy kids having a ride at the water sports centre!’ I held up the picture.

  ‘When you’re talking to the dino-fish in your head, Sami, remember to think in pictures,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Me picture riding in water!’ Sami giggled. She looked over at the dino-fish, who was swimming in circles in the water. ‘Big swishy fishy boat ride. Wheeeeeee!’

  ‘I don’t know why I agreed to do this,’ Mark huffed as he sat behind the controls of a motorboat at the edge of the water. Fang sat by the steering wheel washing her paws.

  ‘Because if you don’t, Dr McDoom said she would tell Mum about all your lies and you’ll be grounded forever,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Mark said. ‘That.’ He started the engine.

  Pradeep, Sami and I all climbed on to the back of the dino-fish and he started to swim.

  ‘Sami, keep think-talking to the dino-fish so he knows what to do, OK?’ I said.

&nbs
p; ‘Wheeeee! Swishy fishy fun,’ Sami said in a half-zombie kind of way.

  Mark gunned the engine and sped away from the shore, and the dino-fish followed, close enough so it looked like we were being towed by the motorboat. We must have looked just like the kids on the picture.

  Mrs Kumar, who was in the audience, along with lots of the reporters and scientists, waved to us as we passed the stage. They all assumed it was part of the build-up to the announcement, I guess.

  With my lip-reading I could tell that Mrs Kumar said to the man next to her, ‘My children are on that banana boat. Apparently this is part of a science project! Dr McDoom specifically asked them to help, you know.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘Science certainly has changed since I was at school.’

  By the time Dr McDoom started to speak we had pulled up to the shore at the other side of the reservoir, as close to the river as we could get. The dino-fish let us off his back and swam nearby as we stood on the shore next to where Mark had parked the motorboat. We could hear what Dr McDoom was saying via the radio mics she had given us.

  ‘Friends and colleagues,’ she began. ‘I think it is time for science to open new doors. To take chances and risks that will lead to exiting new discoveries.’

  The crowd applauded.

  ‘I have here the results of my experiments. My very exciting discovery that will change the way we look at palaeontology and genetics forever . . .’

  With that the curtain lifted and the contents of the tank were revealed.

  Instead of the gasp of awe that might have happened if they’d actually been shown the real dino-fish – what happened next was more of a rumble of confusion.

  Mumbles of ‘Hunh?’, ‘Wha?’ and ‘I need my glasses to see that’ filled the crowd.

  I suppose Frankie was swimming about in the tank doing his best impression of the dino-goldfish face, so basically looking kinda dopey and confused.