Einstein's Underpants--And How They Saved the World

by Anthony McGowan

  Twelve million kilometres away, on the intelligence deck of the Borgia ship, a young officer sent in her report: Elderflower, pork chop, pickled onion, old trainer, rotting octopus, new-mown hay, monkeysick.

  Or: ‘The human has been located. Electronic countermeasures initiated. Recommend the despatch of a surveillance operative with assassination expertise.’

  CHAPTER 24

  THE NAMING

  ‘THE FREAKS IT is then!’

  It was the very first meeting of the group, and they had spent nearly an hour talking about what they should call themselves. They had gathered together in Melvyn’s garage. It was a good place to meet, as Melvyn’s parents didn’t have a car and the garage was filled up with interesting junk. There was a fridge, a tumble dryer and a washing machine, all quite dead. There were racks of ancient stereo equipment, wires splaying out in all directions like a mad scientist’s hair. There were piles of magazines from decades ago, full of smiling housewives and men smoking cigarettes while playing tennis. There were bicycle wheels. There were mousetraps. There was a box of broken and twisted spectacles. There were two sets of false teeth. There was a dartboard on the wall – although, of course, the darts were long lost. Best of all, there were a couple of wobbly chairs, and a sofa that looked like it had been dive-bombed during the Blitz, so everyone had somewhere to sit.

  It also contained a blackboard, in front of which Alexander was standing.

  Various other possible names were chalked on the blackboard. Each had a number beside it.

  Name Idea

  Votes

  The Mighty Warriors of Destiny

  1

  The Justice Kids

  1

  JERK (Junior Emergency Rescue Kids)

  1

  KWRAP (Kids With Really Awesome Powers)

  1

  FREAK (Federation of Really Awesome Kids)

  2

  SUPERSTRONG! SUPERSTRONG! 1

  There was a general groaning from the assembled superheroes, but they couldn’t complain. They had all voted for their own suggestion, except for Melvyn, who had voted for Alexander’s idea, and that was why FREAK had won.

  Just then the garage door screeched open, making everyone jump. Melvyn’s mother appeared, carrying a tray with some glasses. ‘I’ve brought you some lemonade,’ she said, smiling.

  Melvyn hid his face in his hands.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Alexander.

  ‘I told you not to disturb us, Mum,’ Melvyn said from between his fingers. He had told his mother they were rehearsing a play for school.

  ‘I just thought . . . Oh, well, I’ll leave this here for you then.’

  Most of the gang were pleased by the arrival of the lemonade, and there was a pause while they all sucked on their straws.

  When he thought they’d finished, Alexander cleared his throat loudly. ‘OK, now we’re getting somewhere. But I guess you actually want to know what this is all about, what we’re really here for—’

  Alexander was interrupted by the sound of Jamie sucking up the last of the lemonade from the bottom of his glass with the straw. It went on for about forty-eight seconds . . .

  Finally he realized everyone was looking at him. ‘Finished!’

  ‘Thank you, Jamie. Right. Some of you already know much of what I’m about to tell you, but none of you know everything, so I’m going to begin at the beginning. My uncle is one of the great scientific minds of his generation.’

  ‘Is that the uncle who lives over the butcher’s shop in the High Street?’ asked Tortoise Boy.

  ‘Yes, that’s him.’

  ‘The one who keeps getting carted off to the special hospital?’

  ‘He’s much misunderstood. Anyway, he’s collected evidence that proves that we are under attack from a terrifying enemy.’

  ‘Terrorists?’ gasped Felicity.

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Dragons?’ tried Jamie.

  ‘Worse. Much worse. And dragons are only made up, Jamie.’

  ‘They’re in my dragon book.’

  ‘I know, but not everything in books is true.’

  ‘What is it then?’ asked Felicity.

  Alexander paused, for added effect. ‘We’re about to be invaded by . . . by aliens.’

  There followed the unmistakable sounds of disbelief. Spluttering laughter, sardonic sighs, a short, mocking trump from The Hurricane.

  ‘Man, this is crazy,’ said Titch.

  ‘You can’t say that until you’ve heard the evidence.’

  ‘OK, then, show us the evidence, if you’ve got it.’

  Alexander opened up his father’s old briefcase, into which he’d crammed hundreds of pages of printouts. He spread a selection of them out on the floor. The newly named FREAKs gathered round.

  ‘What a lot of numbers,’ said Felicity. ‘There must be millions of them.’

  ‘Numbers,’ sneered Titch, ‘are just numbers. They don’t prove anything.’

  ‘That’s just what I thought,’ Alexander replied earnestly. ‘But if you look at them the right way, if you feel the numbers, then—’

  ‘You can’t feel numbers,’ said Tortoise Boy. ‘That’s stupid.’

  Then Jamie sprang up and started stroking the numbers on the dartboard. ‘I can feel them,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Thanks, Jamie, but that isn’t quite what I meant. I meant that if you look at the numbers in the right way, you see the picture—’

  ‘What picture? I can’t see any picture,’ said Really Annoying Girl.

  ‘That’s because you need the skills to interpret it.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m thick? ’Cos if you are, you are in deep trouble.’

  ‘No, I’m not saying you’re thick—’

  ‘But you’re saying you’re the only one brainy enough to get it?’

  ‘Yes . . . I mean, no . . . I mean, even I needed help to see what was in the numbers.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Titch, ‘so this is the “special thing”you were talking about? Well, I’m not sure if I believe in it, whatever it is.’

  ‘I think it’s time you showed them, Alexander,’ said Melvyn.

  Alexander nodded. He picked up a shoe box and opened the lid. The garage was suddenly very quiet. Even Jamie, who normally burbled away constantly – chatting, humming, singing – stared silently at the box. Later, some of the witnesses would claim that a faint glow came from the box on that first occasion, but that may, of course, have been a trick of memory.

  Alexander reverently lifted up Einstein’s underpants.

  For several seconds the universe stood still. The planets stopped turning. Asteroid c4098 paused in its inexorable journey of destruction. The Earth no longer sailed on its long ellipse through the solar system. The solar system no longer made its way around the core of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way no longer flew from the origin of everything in the Big Bang.

  Or that’s what it felt like.

  Until Jamie said: ‘Knickers!’

  And then there was no stopping it.

  The FREAKs laughed.

  The FREAKs laughed hard.

  The FREAKs laughed long.

  Titch was unable to contain his hilarity and jumped about like a demented flea. The Hurricane’s laughter came out as a long burbling belch. Tortoise Boy rolled himself into a ball of mirth. Even Felicity giggled uncontrollably. Only Really Annoying Girl remained stony-faced.

  ‘You are not serious?’ Titch managed to say eventually.

  Alexander was still holding out the saggy underpants, but now it looked like he was holding out a grey flag of surrender.

  ‘You don’t get it,’ he said, trying to talk over the last of the laughter. ‘These used to belong to Albert Einstein. They have become impregnated with his wisdom and genius. When I wear them I get taken over by his spirit, and I become a genius too. If you put these on you’ll see the picture in the numbers, you really will.’

  He held the pants out to the others. They all r
ecoiled as if the pants were a spitting cobra.

  ‘No way am I touching them,’ said Really Annoying Girl, summing up the general view.

  ‘This is just science fiction, man,’ said Titch, waving Einstein’s underpants away. ‘Leaving aside the whole gross-out side of things.’

  ‘No, Titch, not science fiction: this is science fact.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Melvyn encouragingly. ‘I believe in you.’

  ‘I will.’

  Alexander looked each member of FREAK in the face.

  This was it.

  This was the moment when either the FREAKs, under his leadership, became a force that would save the world, or he himself became not just a figure of fun but one of contempt.

  CHAPTER 25

  ALEXANDER GOT PANTS ON HEAD

  SLOWLY, AND WITH great reverence, Alexander put the underpants that had formerly belonged to the great Albert Einstein on his head, and waited for that faint buzz of genius to take possession of him again.

  It was lucky that the FREAKs had already had a good laugh. What was left was a sort of snorting derision.

  ‘Alexander got pants on head.’ Jamie was often the one to put his finger on things.

  ‘Ask me anything. Anything you want. Go on. Anything,’ said Alexander.

  ‘What’s my favourite colour?’ said Really Annoying Girl.

  ‘No, not that sort of question. I’m a genius, not a mind-reader. It has to be something about the world or science, or some thing that Einstein would know about.’

  ‘I knew you was gonna say that.’

  ‘Right,’ said Titch. ‘What’s the speed of light?’

  Titch actually had no idea what the speed of light might be, except that it was fast. Alexander, on the other hand, did know. They’d done it in physics not long ago, and, as we’ve already found out, numbers were his thing. He thought about mentioning the fact that they’d just learned it in school, but something stopped him.

  ‘Two hundred and ninety-nine million, seven hundred and ninety-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight metres per second.’

  He somehow managed to avoid sounding smug as he said it. Smugness would have ruined everything.

  Suddenly the gang stopped sneering and sniggering. Again Alexander felt that he ought to explain why he knew the speed of light, but once more he stopped himself. He liked the fact that the FREAKs were no longer laughing at him. He liked the fact that they were all looking at him in a new way. And besides, without Einstein’s underpants he’d never have been able to remember the exact speed, would he?

  He could see their minds whirring, trying to find good questions.

  ‘OK, then, what’s the capital of Greenland?’

  As he asked the question, Tortoise Boy had a sort of sly, cunning expression on his face.

  Now, the odd thing was, Alexander had once watched a TV documentary about the Vikings who used to live on Greenland until they all died out in the fifteenth century. They’d lived there for five hundred years, but weren’t able to adapt when a mini ice age kicked in, and they all starved or froze to death. The story was exciting and sad, and he’d always been interested in the Vikings, which made it stick in his head. So he knew quite a lot about Greenland. But he still had to dig deep for the answer. What was it . . . ? Nunk – something like that. Come on, Einstein’s underpants, he prayed. Wait . . . Got it!

  ‘Nuuk.’

  Tortoise Boy first looked triumphant, then puzzled, then triumphant, and then a mixture of the two.

  ‘Actually, that’s wrong. It’s Copenhagen. People don’t realize that the capital of Greenland is the same as the capital of Denmark, because Greenland belongs to Denmark.’

  Alexander smiled. It was a trick question. It was also rather out of date.

  ‘That used to be true. But then Denmark gave Greenland home rule. So now it’s Nuuk.’

  ‘You just made that up,’ said Really Annoying Girl. ‘And I knew you was gonna say it.’

  Melvyn, looking at Alexander quizzically, said: ‘I can go and look it up on the Internet.’

  Alexander nodded, and Melvyn ran out of the garage. The others waited in an awkward silence. Alexander had been confident about the answer, but now he began to have doubts. What if he’d misremembered? What if the pants had betrayed him? If he got this wrong, then it was the end of FREAK. Plus he’d never live down the humiliation. He imagined the scene at school. Everyone lined up with underpants on their heads waiting for him when he got there in the morning. Even the teachers.

  He thought about just walking out of the garage, going home, packing a bag and running away to join the French Foreign Legion. Did they take thirteen-year-olds? Maybe he could lie about his age. Pretend he had some sort of disease that made you look thirteen even when you were thirty-seven.

  He was still caught up in the daydream (in fact he’d reached the point where he was defending a fort in the middle of the desert which was being attacked by some restless tribesmen, all with grey Y-fronts on their heads) when Melvyn burst back in, carrying a book the size of a suitcase.

  ‘He’s right! He’s actually one hundred per cent right! I couldn’t use the computer because my dad’s on it, so he said I had to go and look it up in the encyclopaedia, and here it is.’

  He had his finger in the right page. He swung the book open. The FREAKs all gathered round and looked at the photograph of the collection of wooden hut-like houses that was the capital of Greenland. The caption said: Nuuk (Danish: Godthåb); the capital and largest city of Greenland. Pop. 1,500.

  Felicity gave a gasp of appreciation. She wasn’t the only one.

  ‘OK, not bad, not bad,’ admitted Titch reluctantly. ‘But it’s not exactly genius standard. Do something really, really clever.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, something else with numbers, like Einstein.’

  None of the FREAKs, apart from Alexander, was any good at maths.

  ‘What’s the square root of a hundred and forty-four?’

  Tortoise Boy didn’t pick that by chance. It was the hardest sum to which he knew the answer.

  ‘Twelve.’

  Alexander knew it shouldn’t have impressed anyone, but it did.

  Tortoise Boy couldn’t ask any more difficult sums because he didn’t have a calculator. But Felicity did, in her bag.

  ‘Fine, then, if we’re doing square roots, what’s the square root of, um . . . two hundred and eighty-nine?’

  Now this was another piece of good fortune for Alexander. Felicity had hit on a very lucky number: 289 just happened to be one of the numbers with a square root that was itself a whole number. And Alexander knew his times tables right up to 20 x 20. It took him only a second to retrieve the information.

  ‘Seventeen.’

  Felicity looked sharply at him, then tapped away at the calculator. ‘Right!’ she said, amazed.

  ‘Still,’ said The Hurricane, ‘it’s not exactly rocket science, is it? I mean, you know, any question where the answer’s seventeen can’t be that difficult, can it?’

  There was a murmur of agreement. It was hard to deny that there was more to rocket science than knowing the square root of 289.

  ‘Ask something else then.’

  Alexander was on a high. He’d answered three pretty tricky questions correctly. He felt as though he could answer anything.

  The Hurricane snatched the calculator out of Felicity’s unresisting hands.

  ‘OK, what’s the square root of . . . let me see . . . twenty-one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four point four one?’

  It was what Alexander had been dreading. His happy buzz left him, and he scratched his head through the thin material of the underpants. The whole thing was insane, he realized. He had no more absorbed Einstein’s genius than he’d absorbed Einstein’s breakfast.

  Some of this must have shown on his face. The rest of the FREAKs began to lose the look of borderline awe they’d assumed after his earl
ier feats of genius. The first mocking smiles began to appear. Alexander squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture the answer. It was no good. He gave up. He said the first number that came into his head as a way of bringing the whole show trial to an end.

  ‘One hundred and forty-seven point . . . oh, what does it matter? Point nine.’

  A half-smile of triumph still on his face, The Hurricane checked on the calculator. He glanced at the answer, and began raising one of his cheeks to deliver his verdict. Then he looked back at the grey screen, and his jaw fell open. If it hadn’t been attached with skin it would have dropped right onto the garage floor and scuttled off under the old sofa.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said floppily, because his jaw wasn’t quite back to normal. ‘He’s actually right.’ Then he showed the answer to the other amazed FREAKs, holding the calculator to each in turn.

  After that it went a bit mental. They all started shouting out numbers to him, and Alexander just shouted numbers right back. After the first two triumphs nobody even bothered to check any more, and the calculator was casually thrown aside (although Felicity collected it later – she wasn’t the kind of girl to go around losing things). They just cheered each time he answered.

  ‘Nineteen thousand four hundred and eighty.’

  ‘Hurray!’

  ‘Sixty-four point one seven.’

  ‘Hurray.’

  ‘Six hundred and two point one nine eight seven.’

  ‘Hurray!’

  And suddenly they were all over Alexander, still cheering him, but also clapping him on the back and ruffling his hair. They were a team. They were unstoppable.

  They were the FREAKs.

  They agreed to meet up the next evening to decide exactly how they should thwart the invasion plans of the deadliest enemies planet Earth had ever encountered.

  They might have been less relaxed about the whole thing if they had realized how little time they had left.

  CHAPTER 26

  THEY’RE WATCHING YOU

  MOST OF THE gang decided to walk home using the short cut through the overgrown graveyard that backed onto Melvyn’s garden. There was a gap in the fence you could slip through, if you didn’t mind getting twigs in your hair.