###
I awoke suddenly to the shrill cling-clang of discordant doorbells, followed by Katy's squawk.
My first thought was that the Blackgum had found me! I jumped out of bed, ran down the stairs, and into the hallway, realising as I sprinted that the Blackgum were unlikely to use the front door; much less ring the bell!
"That'll be the Fisks, boy," said Aunt Bea, walking out of the reading room. "Don't run in the hall.
Dutifully, I power-walked to the front door and opened it. Katy's cage-cover was off and she glowered balefully from her swinging perch. She screeched as a blast of cold air from outside ruffled her yellow and black wing feathers.
"Good evening, Mrs Logston," said Mr Fisk, formal, stiff and rather nervous. He looked straight through me to Aunt Bea. My Aunt almost sashayed to the door, straightening out her floral-print dress with the palms of her hands.
"Good evening, Balder," said Aunt Bea, equally formal. It was like a meeting of ambassadors! "My, you look dashing this evening. And such lovely blooms."
With his bright red face and tatty brown suit, Mr Fisk looked like a fat crab stuck in a bucket with legs. The bunch of garish yellow flowers he handed to Aunt Bea looked like the type you pick up for $5 at the petrol station. Something fishy was going on. As he stepped through the door, I was assailed by the reek of musk cologne and, under it, the faint whiff of ammonia.
"Thanks for looking after Jokkum tonight," Mr Fisk said, stepping through the door to reveal his son. Joke followed his father into the house, lugging a green backpack about half his size. His face was blank and shiny, like he had also just woken up.
"Shouldn't be any trouble," said Mr Fisk, winking at his son. "Must have 20 books in that bag, so you probably won't hear a peep out of him."
"My pleasure," said Aunt Bea, not very convincingly. "Jokkum and Patrick will keep each other amused. They have a bridge to design. I'll let Bridget know you are here," she said, almost coyly. "Boy: why don't you help Jokkum with his school bag?"
"Let Mum know he's here?" I asked Aunt Bea. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you, boy," said my Aunt innocently. "Mr Fisk has kindly invited your mother out for dinner and a movie."
"Movie and a dinner, actually," laughed Mr Fisk, looking at his watch.
"She's not well enough to go out," I said to Aunt Bea. "Not with Mr Fisk, anyway."
"Nonsense, boy," snapped Aunt Bea. "Don't be insolent. A night out on the town is exactly what your mother needs. It's not healthy staying cooped up in the house all day and night."
"But she's not healthy, Aunt Bea. That's the point," I said, pouting crossly.
Before Aunt Bea could respond, Mum's walked serenely into the hall. She wore a slinky metallic, green dress and her hair had been harnessed into a bun lanced with silver chopsticks. Unusually, she had applied makeup and her lipstick was the same glossy red as Mr Fisk's cheeks.
Mum’s silver swan-pendant twinkled under the hall chandelier. She looked every inch a movie star, a femme fatale from an old noir movie, the type we used to watch with Dad. Even Katy stopped mid-squawk to gaze at her.
"Good evening, Balder," she said. "Sorry to have kept you waiting."
Aunt Bea brandished the petrol station flowers, like a soggy sabre, then thrust the stems into Mum's hands. "These are magnificent, Balder," she said. "You shouldn't have. I'm sure the last thing you need tonight is to take me out. Beatrice told me about the school."
"It's a big job," admitted Mr Fisk, pretending to be modest. "And it's not finished yet. Will probably take days before the school ground's safe for classes to resume again. But I wouldn't have missed tonight for anything, Bridget. You look ravishing."
My blood boiled. I felt like punching Mr Fisk on his beetroot nose.
"Thank you, Balder," Mum said. "You look very smart yourself."
"That would be a first," I muttered, louder than I'd intended.
"Hey," squeaked Joke.
"Boy," shouted Aunt Bea, her smile fading. "Why don't you help Jokkum upstairs? You don't have much time to finish the project."
"Sounds like a plan," said Mum, mussing my hair. "And apologise to Mr Fisk for being so incredibly rude."
"But -" I started.
"Now!" Mum ordered, sounding just like her sister. "Paddy?" said Mum.
"Sorry, Mr Fisk," I said, through gritted teeth.
"Don't worry, Patrick,” said Mr Fisk, flashing his chipped choppers. “I'll take good care of your mother."
"Have a grand night on the town," said Aunt Bea, with a salacious wink.
"Come on Joke," I muttered. "You know the way."
"Good boy," said Mum, twisting her swan-pendant absently with her left hand. Mr Fisk escorted her out the door. "And Paddy," said Mum, looking back over her shoulder from the doorway.
"Yes, Mum?"
"Don't wait up."
11. BUILDING BRIDGES
I slammed my bedroom door, snatched Joke's bag from his shoulder and pelted it against my Tobor poster. The bag crashed to the floor.
"What the hell is your father up to with Mum?"
"Calm down," said Joke. "It's just a movie."
"And a dinner," I said pretending to comb wisps of hair across my head like Mr Fisk. "And cheap, ugly flowers, don't forget. Your dad thinks he is on a date. With my Mum!"
"They're not ugly," said Joke. "I grew those flowers from seed: paeonia officinalis."
"Huh?"
"The scientific name for the angiosperms commonly known as peonies. And I think they're beautiful."
"Hah, I sneered.”So your dad's too cheap to even buy flowers."
"Well, it's not as if we are swimming in money, Paddy," said Joke. "Not all of us have Aunts to live with.”
"Well," I said, trying to think up a good comeback, and failing. "Just tell your dad to stay away from my Mum."
"Why?"
"Because he's a gossipy no-hoper and not good enough for her, that's why." I crossed my arms.
"Sounds like you're jealous," said Joke, quietly.
"Of what? Your loser dad?" I said.
"That you're not the one out at a movie with your mother."
"Don't be stupid," I snapped. "I don't want to watch some dumb film about kissing."
"You've been hanging out with Mark for too long," said Joke, holding his ground. "You think everything revolves around you. Poor Paddy. His mummy isn't at home one night to tuck him in."
"Shut up, Joke. You don't know what you're talking about."
"Rubbish I don't," said Joke, resting his hand on my shoulder. "Your father passed away and your mother's sick. My mum ran off and left dad stuck with me. Ever thought that they might and want to spend some time talking to people other than you and me?"
"Mum has Aunt Bea," I said, weakly, shrugging Joke's hand off my shoulder.
"And you wouldn't want a night away from her?" said Joke, grinning suddenly. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't help but snigger.
"Come on Paddy," said Joke. "I can't see your mother falling head over heels for my dad, especially in that old suit he's wearing! I think he got married in it! You should have seen him trying to zip up the trousers. He can hardly sit down. And the jacket’s made of thick polyester, so he'll be as hot as hell all night."
I burst into laughter. "I'm sorry for being such a jerk, Joke."
"I'm used to it," said Joke. He walked over to the wall, smoothed out the rumpled poster of Tobor the Great and picked up his bag. "You want to watch some TV?"
"TV?" I asked. In the whole time I'd known him, I'd only seen Joke watch TV once, and that was a black and white National Geographic documentary on Amazonian pygmies. "What about the bridge?"
Joke yawned. "We can do it later. I know your Aunt doesn't let you play computer games in the house, but let's go to Arcadia and play space shooters. Do you think your Aunt would drive us?"
Arcadia was a games arcade owned by Mrs Barker. I was surprised Joke even knew about it, much le
ss wanted to go.
"Are you all right, Joke?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, sitting down on my bed. "Actually, I can't be bothered asking your Aunt. Why don't we just watch a DVD and then go to bed? Something we've seen before. Do you have Clash of the Titans? The original one with the clockwork owl?
What had gotten into Joke? He hated that movie, didn't think it was scientifically defensible in any dimension.
Joke lay down on my bed. "Paddy, just start the movie. I'm just going to take a little nap." His eyes drooped shut, and he yawned again, massively like a dying lion. "Wake me up when it gets up to Medusa. Those snakes on her head are cool. I wish the grumpy old man had given me the set square."
"Huh?"
Joke closed his eyes: "The set square in his case. That old guy showed it to me at school, remember, just after the -". Joke furrowed his brow. "Doesn't matter. The compasses are beautiful. Though we could design beautiful bridges with that set square, if only he had given it to me."
Mr Seth's words came back to me: He'll need your help - you have to keep him focused on the town, the here and now. Don't let him day-dream. It seemed funny to say, but until Joke had mentioned the set square and Mr Seth's case, I hadn't thought much about the attack - or even poor Tim. I hadn't forgotten it - how could anyone forget such a nightmare! - it seemed so remote, and unreal, unimportant somehow. Irrelevant. But it had only happened that morning. And I had nearly been killed!
Joke dozed away, on his side. I sat down on the bed next to him and punched him, hard, on his nearest bicep.
"Owww!" groaned Joke. Like a malfunctioning android, he opened one eye, then closed it. "What was that for?"
I punched him again, harder, in exactly the same place, my second finger curled in a question mark to make the blow more painful. It worked: Joke opened both eyes and sat up.
"Paddy - what the heck?! I think you've corked my arm."
"Get up, now!" I ordered. "Or I'm going to keep smacking you."
"Why? What's so urgent? Let me sleep. Please, Paddy. Just a while."
"We're not going to sleep yet - and we're not going to watch TV, or play video games - until we've finished the bridge design."
"No rush, let's do it tomorrow," pleaded Joke.
"It's due tomorrow, and we haven't even started it. We were meant to work on it yesterday, when you didn't show up."
Joke rubbed his eyes. "Yesterday? Oh, yeah. Sorry about that." He looked over my shoulder to his reflection in my mirrored door. "Dad needed me to help move some old furniture for Mrs Carruthers."
"Don't make excuses!" I barked like a drill sergeant. "Get up and show me what's in the bag. Now!"
Joke pushed himself off the bed, unzipped his schoolbag and unpacked its contents, stacking book after book on top of each other, from largest to smallest, until the stack resembled a small Mayan temple.
I waited patiently until he was done, and then kicked the stack over.
"Don't damage the books!" squealed Joke. His eyes were starting to clear, and his face was scrunched up with exasperation. "They're library books," he said. "Mrs Carruthers ordered them express from the City to thank me for moving her hall stand."
I stooped over and picked up the largest of the books. De Architectura by Vitruvius. Although the cover said it was a reprint, it looked old and delicate. I flicked it open and started to tear out pages.
"No!" screamed Joke, flapping ineffectually at my legs. I jumped back, and he tried to wrestle the book out of my hands. I cracked the book's spine. He lunged at me, his compasses flying out of his pocket and onto the floor. I ducked him like a matador and he charged across the room, tumbling over my hamper, and crashed head first into the card table. The card table collapsed, knocking my desk lamp off its stand. The lamp's tubular globe shattered on the bare floorboards.
I danced around the room, whistling while I ripped. Joke picked himself up and chased after me, caterwailing.
Joke's never been good at sports - he's got terrible hand-eye coordination - and after less than a minute, he stopped chasing me and plonked himself down in the centre of my room, out of breath, his features bubbling with rage.
"Paddy," he said. "You can't destroy library books. I'll have to pay to replace them. And we need that one: it's got some great ideas for our bridge."
"I thought you didn't care," I observed.
"Of course I care," snapped Joke. "I need that scholarship."
"Then why were you napping?"
"I -". He stopped, open mouthed like a landed cod. "I don't know," he confessed. "I was so tired, and slow, like my head was full of sand."
"Well I'm glad you are back on message, as Mrs Kroker would say."
"Mrs Kroker?" Joke's face went white, and his eyes widened. "Tim! What happened to Tim?"
I put the remains of the book down, walked over to Joke and sat down beside him. "He's dead, Joke," I said, gently. "There's something evil in this town, and it killed him."
"Who? Why aren't the police hunting for the killer? We need to call them."
"It's a what."
"What?"
"The thing that killed Tim. It's not a 'who', it's a 'what'. And it's dead too. But there are more coming. No-one remembers Tim anymore, probably not even Mrs Kroker. Before you came, I heard Aunt Bea rabbiting on to Mr Barker about weeds. Do you think your dad would be taking Mum our on a date if they knew one of our classmates had been murdered? Everyone's forgotten he ever lived here. I'd half forgotten him as well, until you mentioned that set square!"
It took Joke a few seconds to absorb what I'd said. "So as far as this town is concerned, he never existed. What's happening, Paddy? Maybe someone's poisoned the reservoir with a hallucinogen. Maybe that old man. There was something fishy about him."
"No," I replied. "I don't think anyone's poisoned our water supply. And Mr Seth's trying to help stop more deaths from happening by finding the source."
"And while we wait, twiddling our thumbs, more people might die?"
"Probably," I said. There was no point trying to sugar-coat it for Joke. He needed to know how serious things were.
"We've got to do something, Paddy."
"We need to keep our minds working, or we will become easy prey."
"Which is why you tore up the book."
I nodded. "I needed to snap you out of it. Do the same for me if I start to forget stuff. Start with my maths textbook," I said, and grinned. Joke stood up and righted the card table. Then he picked up his pair of compasses, sat down, and started carving at the floorboards underneath the table. I crawled forward to inspect his work:
"Tim Kroker was murdered. Lest we forget," it said, followed by the date.
"The best way to help is to keep ourselves thinking,” I said. “That way, we'll be awake and ready to fight if we have to. Mr Seth said he didn't expect another attack for a while."
"And you believe him?"
"We don't have much choice," I said. "Now concentrate, and let's brainstorm a bridge."
Joke quivered. Then he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. I was impressed: he'd just processed a lot of information - much or it irrational and terrifying. "Let's get out of this room," I said. "That bed is too tempting."
We gathered the books and headed for Uncle Gerry's reading room.
Sub Rosa had originally been a small school. The reading room was the school library. It was a huge room, with walls of built-in shelves crammed with books. Some of the bookcases on the side walls contained first editions. Those were locked behind glass doors and Aunt Bea guarded the key jealously. Most of the other books were neither rare nor off limits.
The first time Joke walked into the reading room, he nearly collapsed in a paroxysm of joy. Even after all we had just gone through, his eyes hungrily scoured the shelves.
I switched on all the lights. The reading room lit up like the top floor of a light house.
Uncle Gerry had installed two oversized green leather armchairs like throne
s. Each chair featured an inbuilt mahogany side table, on which he used to rest his plentiful bowls of cashew nuts and ashtrays. He liked to snack and smoke while he read, and he read a lot, which is probably why he was so fat and unhealthy!
The armchairs were too deep - and too relaxing - for me and Joke, so we sat cross-legged in front of them, resting against their footrests. Thick blue velvet curtains were drawn across the large bay window that looked out at the street.
Mum must have anticipated we'd come down there to study. Plates of sandwiches, fruit and gingerbread piglets - the latter her specialty - were laid out on the side-tables. Ignoring the healthy stuff, Joke and I stuffed sties of piglets into our mouths, savouring the chocolate sugar dots Mum had used for their eyes.
Joke opened his bag, fanned out the text-books, then pulled out a couple of battered sketch pads and some coloured pencils. We set to work, flicking through the books for ideas. After we’d looked at Joke's library books, we found plenty of useful engineering tomes in Uncle Gerry's shelves. Most of them too technical for us to understand. But they had some great pictures.
Mr Barker had been clear: the bridge needed to connect his two theme parks. Midas Mountain was a re-creation of what Quakehaven had looked like in the 1850s, when the town had sprung up from no-where in the aftermath of an earthquake and the discovery of gold seams. DinoQuake was to be a family park with a dinosaur theme.
The winning design had to incorporate features of both parks: the gold rush and dinosaurs. After less than half an hour, it became clear that Joke and I had very different ideas of what we wanted the bridge to be.
"What's wrong with a T-rex lying on a surfboard juggling gold-pans?" I asked Joke, wounded. I thought my idea was genius, but Joke shook his head gravely.
"Where to begin," he said. "First of all, Tyrannosaurus Rex - if that what this is meant to be - did not populate this area, or even this country. Second, T-Rex stood upright and couldn't lie flat because of his spine - he'd be a lousy bridge. And third - and most obviously, T-Rex lived about 110 million years ago - man only arrived in this country about 40,000 years ago. Gold-diggers weren't seen in these parts until about 160 years back."
"Why do you have to be so literal?!" I said, "The bridge should be a bit of fun to bring in the crowds."
"Your idea is a scientific abomination," said Joke primly. "Those pans are not to scale. And, on top of all of that, your design would repulse tourists. They'd flee to the Beltway."
"Well what's your great idea, then?" I said, trying not to sulk.
"It's not finished, yet," said Joke, holding his sketch book to his chest.
"Come on! We don't have much time - we've got to start building the model soon."
"OK then," said Joke, handing me his book. "But bear in mind it’s just a prototype."
I glanced down at the page, and laughed. It was a simple crescent-moon shaped bridge, with white pickets on either side.
"Couldn't you make it any more boring? How's this meant to link Midas Mountain and Dino-Quake?"
"Look closer," said Joke.
On each picket, tiny symbols had been scribbled. At first glance, I'd assumed they were Joke's idea of decorative art. I squinted, bringing the page a little closer to my face and deciphered minute words on each picket, like:
Years ago - Event
4500 million - Earth's crust and the oceans formed
1600 million - Marine Life
590 million - Trilobites
408 million - Insects
360 million - Amphibians, Sharks and Reptiles
250 million - Dinosuars, Crustaceans and First Mammals
213 million - Birds
98 million - Dinosaurs died out
65--5 million - Primates, Mammoths, Dogs and Cats, Snails, Grazing mammals
2 million - primitive Humans (e.g homo habilus)
0.01 - Humans develop agriculture
17,000 years - Cave Paintings Lacaux
5,500 years - Sumerian empire
5,000 years - Minoan civilisation
4,800 - Chinese civilisation
4,600 - Mayan civilisation
4,500 - Great Pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in England; and Indus civilisations in India
3,260 - Celts
And so on.
There were a whole lot more - no wonder it had taken him so long, and all from memory! I won't bore you with the dates for places like ancient Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and people like Socrates, Alexander the Great, Buddha, Plato, and a guy called Jesus - maybe you've heard of them. But I will tell you the last picket, right after 1841 - Irish potato famine" read:
160 years - Gold Rush Quakehaven, welcome to Midas Mountain.
"You have an amazing mind, Joke", I said, impressed. "But this is going to bore everyone to tears. Walking on the bridge will be like a forced history lesson."
"Maybe it will give everyone some perspective - I mean the 1850s are not even ten minutes ago, in geological time."
"True. But Dad used to tell me history isn't just a bunch of dates and names. It's the stories that matter. Things ordinary women and men have achieved. Learning how to avoid mistakes others have made.
"Well, I've put a lot of work into this," said Joke stubbornly. "Unless you can think of a better idea, I say we go with it. I'm not going to embarrass myself in front of the scholarship committee with a Juggling Jurassic Junk bridge!"
He had a point. My design did lack the nerd factor likely to attract the committee. Still, I liked the look of my bridge better, even if it was silly. I put both our drawings next to each other, and compared them. Suddenly, lightning struck.
"Hey Joke," I cried. "What was the name of the dinosaur they found under Barkerfield all those years ago?"
"Minmi," said Joke scratching his ear.
"That doesn't sound like a dinosaur name."
"I know. It was the shortest dinosaur name, till the Chinese named one Mei, about five years ago."
"And what did it look like? Minmi, I mean." I had a vague picture in my head from the news reports, but I knew Joke would have a detailed description imprinted in his cortex.
"Not sure this is the best use of our time, Paddy," he said.
"Just humour me for a minute. What did Minmi look like?"
Well it was an ankylosaur, so it had a head a bit like a plant-eating reptile's, but much more fierce with a long tail."
"Like a battle turtle?!" I asked, excited.
"Um. Kinda, though that's not technically correct. Turtles are reptiles, not dinosaurs. Minmi is really old - those fossils were dated to over 100 million years. It was about three metres long, walked on four legs and ate plants, things like ferns, fallen tree boughs and grasses, which it crunched up with its beak. Minmi's back was curved and covered with armoured plates, and it also had plates that stuck up on the side of its spine and on its tail."
I grinned. "So let me get this right. It's a local dinosaur. Its body was long and arched, and its back was covered in armour that stuck up like -"
"Pickets!" said Joke, excited, suddenly understanding where I was going. "That's perfect, Paddy!"
Joke reached into his bag and grabbed a plastic takeaway container full of modelling clay and some folded up butchers’ paper, which he spread out on the carpet. "Let's get started," he said. He opened the container and scooped out a glob of clay.
We got to work. The next two hours flew by. I tracked down and traced out a picture of Minmi from one of Uncle Gerry's old science magazines, copied it onto a page of my sketch book and then set about modelling Minmi's body. It was slow and hard going: I worked on the armour plates, then body, head and tail - the big picture stuff - while Joke painstakingly inscribed the dates and events into the plates with my pair of compasses.
About forty minutes in, I stopped: "We've got the dinosaur and the dates, including the gold rush plate. Do you think we've done enough to link it properly to Midas Mountain?"
Without even looking up from his work, Jok
e said "I thought of that half an hour ago and figured out the answer - let's paint Minmi gold! There are only two extant fossil specimens on record, and neither suggests its colour. Gold is thus scientifically defensible, if a little bit of a stretch."
It was so simple. "Go team, Joke!" I said.
"Less talk, more work," muttered Joke, as he carved the word 'amphibian' into one of the plates with the tip of a compass.
"Yes, boss," I said grinning at Joke's set jaw, square shoulders and deep concentration.
I was still smiling twenty minutes later when the door suddenly crashed open. Mr Fisk ran into the room, followed by Mum. Joke and I turned and kneeled, peering over the backs of the chairs at the unexpected intrusion.
"Go get your things, Joke," shouted Mr Fisk. "You are not spending another minute with that fork-tongued snake!"