The Race Against Time

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  “What’s going on? It tickles,” said Red, as he sank back into the safety of his seat. “It tickles! And . . . whoa . . . what is that?”

  Far below them, as far as any of them could see, stretched a forest. Long, wispy clouds flew like banners over the vast army of trees.

  “That’s rain forest,” said Lucy.

  “I’m setting a course for 1966,” said Dad.

  “Which way would that be?” asked Lucy.

  “Well . . . forward . . . about forty years forward.”

  “We’ve moved in time since then,” said Lucy. “And we don’t know in which direction. Red just bashed the Chronojuster up and down. That forest could be a thousand years in the past. Or it could be in some strange future. We need to go down there and find out before we move.”

  “Where would we land?” said Jem. “There’s no space.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Red. “Over there. See that gap between the trees? It has to be a landing site.”

  “Well spotted, Red,” said Dad, as he carefully adjusted the wing flaps and circled slowly toward the landing site.

  Red shrugged. “You live on the street, you learn to notice stuff.”

  But it wasn’t a landing site at all. It was a fat brown river. One of the switches on Chitty’s dashboard flashed on and off as if the car herself was reminding Dad that she couldn’t just land in the water.

  “Mister! We’re crashing! We’re going to drown!” yelled Red.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dad, flicking the illuminated switch.

  Chitty withdrew her wheels and extended her floats. She skimmed the surface for a while, then slid onto the water like a duck landing on a pond. They chugged up a river that was so overhung with trees, they often had to duck or push them aside. Red and Jem climbed out onto Chitty’s long, elegant bonnet, perching just behind Chitty’s mascot — the Zborowski Lightning — and pushing the branches aside. The air was warm. Butterflies and dragonflies flashed in the shafts of dusty sunlight that filtered through the leaves.

  “Maybe this is none of my business,” said Red, “but where are we?”

  “Judging by the density of the forest,” said Lucy, “I would say Africa. Or maybe Amazonia.”

  “You mean . . . we’re out of state? We’re not in New York anymore?”

  An alligator slid from the river’s slippery banks into the water, speeding toward them without a ripple.

  “No,” said Lucy, “I don’t think this is New York.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mum, whacking the approaching alligator on the nose with her handbag. “We’ll take you home as soon as we get our bearings.”

  “We gotta win that race, lady. There’s twenty-five dollars riding on it.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mum. “Meanwhile, how about a game of I Spy? That usually helps pass the time on long car journeys.”

  “I’m no spy, lady. I did nothing wrong.”

  “I Spy is a game. You must have played it.”

  Red looked completely blank.

  “But you must have played it. You just look around you. Pick an object and then tell us the first letter of its name, and we have to guess what it is.”

  “Do I get paid if you guess right?”

  “No. It’s just for fun.”

  Red looked blank again. It seemed like unpaid fun was a new idea to him.

  “I ain’t stupid, ma’am. I can give you the best shoe shine on the whole island of Manhattan. Ask anyone. Wanna know my secret? Well, it’s a secret.”

  “But you don’t know any games? Look. I say, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with P.’ Give it a try.”

  “Puma!” yelled Little Harry. There really was a puma following them along the riverbank.

  “Very good, Little Harry. Now you try, Red.”

  “The secret of a great shoe shine is to spray water on the polish before you brush it off.”

  “I spy with my little eye something beginning with P,” said Lucy.

  The answer turned out to be a pangolin — a kind of armoured anteater — which was bowling along the muddy shore. Only Lucy had ever heard of it, so she won and gave her turn to Red.

  “Does it have to be P every time?” said Red.

  “No. It can be any letter you like.”

  “OK, then, P it is . . . for piranhas. Just there . . .”

  Lucy had been dangling her hand in the water. She pulled it out hastily now. “You’re supposed to let us guess,” she said. “But on this occasion, I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Fish! Fish! Bitey fish!” yelled Little Harry, trying to reach into the water, to feed his own hand to the piranhas.

  “No, Little Harry!” said Jem. He grabbed the strip of Cretaceous spider’s web that was still stuck to Little Harry’s wrist and yanked him back into his seat. “That was handy,” said Jem. “Just what you need: a sticky and unbreakable leash.”

  They drifted upstream I-Spying otters and capybaras, macaws and rubber trees and waterfalls. When Red asked for “something beginning with F,” no one guessed it and he said, “Folks!”

  “What?”

  “People.”

  “People begins with P.”

  “That’s why I said ‘folks.’ ”

  “What folks?”

  “Them folks there . . .” He pointed to the left bank.

  “I can’t see anyone,” said Jem.

  “Keep watching. See that tree? The one that hangs right over? Behind the root . . .”

  Jem stared and stared. A branch twitched. There was a faint sound that could have been a whisper. “Is there someone there?” he asked.

  “Ten someones,” said Red.

  “All I can see are leaves.”

  “When you live on the streets of New York City,” said Red, “you learn to keep an eye out for trouble.”

  The people who were watching Chitty pass through the trees were hunters who had lived all their lives in the rain forest. They could pass through thick undergrowth without bending a leaf. They could run without breaking a twig. They painted their bodies in thick earthy paints for camouflage. Thanks to their ancient skills, they could pass, invisible and silent, through the forest. Once they’d had a look at Chitty, though, they couldn’t be bothered with any of that.

  When Chitty came chugging round the next bend, the Tootings found the banks lined with people. People who were not invisible or silent at all — people who were cheering and waving. Families leaped into canoes to follow the great car up the river. A group of young men paddled ahead of them as if leading the way. By the time she hit the next bend, she was the flagship of a navy of excited canoes.

  None of this was much of a surprise to the Tootings. Wherever they had gone in the world, people (as opposed to dinosaurs) had been thrilled to see Chitty — her gorgeous green paintwork, her gleaming exhausts. After all, Chitty was a work of art, and if you drive a work of art, people stop and look.

  Beyond the bend, the river widened into a lagoon whose gently sloping gravel shores were crowded with more people, waving and pointing. Suddenly all the men on the bank raised their arms, shook their feathered bracelets, and yelled, “Chitty! Chitty!”

  All the women raised their bows and arrows and replied, “Bang! Bang!”

  They did it again.

  “Chitty! Chitty!”

  “Bang! Bang!”

  One little girl said, “Bang!” a bit after everyone else, and everybody laughed happily at her mistake. Then they started to sing a song about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  “These people have a song about our car,” said Lucy. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

  “They’re just very excited to see us,” said Mum. “Maybe they don’t get many visitors. Can you understand the words, Lucy?”

  “They must be speaking one of the lost languages of Amazonia, which were all wiped out when the conquistadores arrived in the sixteenth century. So . . . no.”

  When Dad drove Chitty up onto the riverbank, children clambered onto her running-b
oards, her bonnet, and her bumpers. Teenage girls ran up and honked her horn. They greeted her like an old friend. Men came running from the trees with lianas and ropes and fastened them to Chitty’s fenders and pulled her through the town, clapping and singing, “Bang! Bang!” and “Chitty! Chitty!” as they went. And what a town it was. The houses were all raised on wooden stilts (“for when the river rises,” said Lucy). Children and strange, chickeny birds played in and out of the space between the stilts. All the houses were different — some had round windows, some had paintings on the outside, some had buckets of flowers hanging from every corner, some were covered in carvings — but none of them looked poor, and none of them looked grand. Everyone was dressed differently, but everyone’s clothes were bright and new.

  In the middle of the town was a market. There were piles of brilliantly coloured fruits and fat vegetables and troughs full of fish. Unlike at the markets at home, people stopped and took things from the piles.

  “Hey!” whispered Red. “Those people are just taking stuff and not paying for it.”

  “This seems to be a society that doesn’t use money,” said Lucy.

  “You mean they’re all robbers?” asked Red.

  “No. They just don’t need money. They share what they have.”

  “Wow,” said Red. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I think it’s rather sweet,” said Mum.

  “Sure. Until they want us to share Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

  At the far end of the square was a house that looked completely different from all the others. It was not on stilts or covered in beautiful carvings. It sat square on the ground. Its garden was surrounded by a fence. There was a path leading to the front door. It had a pointy roof and four windows — though there was no glass in them. Where all the other houses had a platform you could climb onto, this one had a front door with a knocker on it. In other words, it was exactly the kind of house you might see in Basildon. Except it was in the middle of the jungle. Next to the house was a small, flat-roofed garage with an up-and-over door that suddenly opened as they got nearer. Two big women strode out to meet them. Not big like your mum’s friend who’s too big for her dress, but big like boxers, or basketball players, or big, beautiful statues. Their hair flowed over their shoulders like shiny black waterfalls, decorated with clusters of jewel-bright feathers. The two women were so alike that at first Jem thought they weren’t two women at all, but one woman twice. Their faces were identical. Their hair was identical. They were wearing identical clothes and identical feathers. When one of them raised her finger in the air, the other did the same. When one of them spoke, it was as though someone had pressed the mute button on the whole forest. Everything was quiet and listening, even the insects. This is what she said.

  “Where on earth have you been? We’ve been waiting literally ages, haven’t we, Imogen?”

  “We really, really have, Eliza. We’ve been waiting for generations.”

  “Absolutely generations.”

  “You speak English?” asked Mum.

  “Is that what you call it?” said Eliza. “We call it Chitty Talk, don’t we, Imogen?”

  “We do, Eliza. Can I say you’re all certainly super-welcome here in Manau, but Chitty is the most especially welcome.”

  Imogen crouched down in front of Chitty’s radiator and said, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it’s soooo wonderful that you’ve come back to us at last.”

  Eliza crouched down next to her sister. “We always hoped to see you,” she said, patting Chitty on the fender. “Are you going to stay with us long?”

  The whole crowd held its breath, waiting for the car to reply. The Tootings looked at one another. No one wanted to be the one to say that Chitty couldn’t talk.

  “Cars don’t talk,” said Red.

  “Now, that,” said Imogen, straightening up, “is very much a disappointment.”

  “How do you know her name?” asked Jem. “Have you seen her before?”

  “Seen her?” said Imogen. “No. Heard of her? Yes. Waited for her? Double yes with bells on top.”

  “Some people said she was just a story, but now here she is. Real as rain and pretty as paint.”

  “I always believed in Chitty, but now that she’s here . . . somehow I don’t believe it! Can we touch her?”

  “Of course.”

  All the people formed an orderly queue, and one by one they touched Chitty’s bodywork. Some of them strewed flowers across her bonnet or twisted blossoms in between the spokes of her wheels.

  “I think we’re allowed to sit in her,” said Imogen. “After all, we are the Queen.”

  “By all means,” said Dad, opening Chitty’s door so that the twins could climb in. “Are you both Queens, or is one of you the Queen and one of you . . . not?”

  “We’re both the Queen,” said Eliza.

  “It takes two people to be Queen,” said Imogen.

  “You can’t be Queen unless there’s two of you,” explained Eliza.

  “I must say,” said Mum, “I love your bracelet.”

  “Really?” said Eliza. “Then, it’s yours.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. Really . . .”

  But Eliza held out her wrist to Mum and, as she did so, her splendid bracelet separated into six bright pieces, and those pieces flitted around her head. It wasn’t a bracelet at all. It was a charm of tiny hummingbirds, trained to perch on her wrist or flit around her head like a living veil. Mum cooed in wonder as the hummingbirds flashed and thrummed around her.

  “The garage is perfect, by the way,” said Dad.

  “You like it — it’s yours,” said Imogen.

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t.”

  “You like it, so it’s yours,” insisted Eliza, as though she were describing a law of physics.

  “Do you like the house?” asked Eliza.

  The only polite thing Mum could say was “yes,” even though she knew what was coming next . . .

  “Yours,” said the twins together.

  “The rule seems to be,” said Lucy, “that if you say you like something, they give it to you.”

  “Oh, I love this one’s hair.” Eliza sighed.

  “It’s gorgeous, like gold,” swooned Imogen.

  “No!” gasped Red, clamping his hands on his head. “Don’t let them take my hair!” But it seemed that all they wanted was to twiddle their fingers through his curls.

  Inside the house was a long wooden table where baskets of luscious berries and shiny fruit snuggled up to sizzling slices of fish laid out on leaves the size of dinner plates. Wooden goblets brimmed with unfamiliar juices.

  “I never saw this much food in all my life,” said Red.

  “It’s all yours,” said Eliza.

  “Absolutely every crumb,” said Imogen.

  “Ever since the days of our great-grandmother, we’ve laid a feast out here each day, ready for the return of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And now she has returned. This is a great day. Please, eat . . .”

  “What happened to all the food on all the thousands of days we never came?” asked Lucy.

  “Every night the people came and ate it all. As they ate, they thanked Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Even though she wasn’t there. The feast was her present to them.”

  “Great-Grandmother’s painting helped us think of her,” said Imogen.

  The wall was covered by a colourful painting. It showed a gorgeous old racing car with a handsome man at the wheel, an elegant woman next to him, and two pretty children in the backseat.

  “She really caught Chitty perfectly,” said Imogen.

  “It’s a super-perfect likeness. Every screw and every rivet.”

  “Every rivet and every screw.”

  “Of course, the people look nothing like you.”

  “No,” agreed Mum, thinking to herself, The woman is at least two dress sizes bigger than me.

  “Definitely not,” said Dad, thinking, I’ve got a lot more hair than him.

  “Nothing like us,”
said Lucy, who thought the girl looked revoltingly girlie.

  “It’s not us,” said Jem, flicking through the logbook. “That is the Pott family — that’s Commander Pott, the man who gave Chitty her green-striped wings.”

  “Never mind,” said Imogen. “As long as Chitty is here, that’s all that matters. Great-Grandmother said Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would return, which she has.”

  “And she said the car would solve all our problems. Which I’m sure she will.”

  “You have problems?” asked Dad, tucking into the biggest, juiciest mango he had ever seen in his life. “But this place seems so happy and wonderful.”

  “We have heaps of problems.”

  “Heaps on top of heaps.”

  “And heaps underneath heaps. Life is just stress and more stress here.”

  “With a break for stress.”

  “That’s why we love Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” said Imogen, staring deep into Dad’s eyes.

  “We really, really love Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” added Eliza, staring pointedly into Mum’s eyes.

  All at once the room was filled with an awkward silence. Mum and Dad both understood that when the twins said they loved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the polite thing to say was, “OK, then, she’s all yours.” But how could they say that? Without Chitty to take them home, they would be trapped forever in sixteenth-century Amazonia. Because that’s where they were. Mum looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mum. Parents looked at children. Everyone looked at the ground.

  When they looked up, the twins and all the people of Manau had gone.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” said Lucy.

  “What else could we do? We can’t stay in the Amazon forever. We haven’t packed for it.”

  “Besides,” said Jem, “we are actually on a mission to find the Potts and save the world from Tiny Jack.”

  “That’s true,” said Dad. “But honestly, you should try these mangoes first.”

  “I am really hungry,” admitted Jem.

  “Not surprising,” said Lucy. “It’s five centuries since supper and sixty-six million years since breakfast.”

  Maybe it was because all the food was strange and new, maybe it was because it was so fresh and juicy, but while they ate, they forgot about everything else. The fish was cooked in a sauce so surprising and complicated, their brains busied themselves trying to identify the ingredients. There were fruits the size of apples with hard spiky skin that, when opened, had flesh of different colours. They were bursting with a rich, sweet, sticky juice so delicious that all the thoughts that Jem might have been thinking — about how to save the world from Tiny Jack, how to repay the kindness of the twin Queens — dissolved.