The Race Against Time

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Oh no, thought Jem, not again. Little Harry is out there somewhere. I’ll pull him back in.

  He tugged at the web, trying to reel Little Harry in like a fish. Little Harry tugged back. Jem tugged harder but not too hard — he didn’t want his younger brother to fall over. Little Harry came a bit nearer this time. He tugged again. Nearer again. It seemed to be working. Jem tugged one more time — a touch harder. Little Harry tugged back hard. Surprisingly hard. Shockingly hard. So hard that Jem was dragged out from behind the statue. Next thing he knew, he was being hauled down the steps. He tumbled and fell, but something — it couldn’t be Little Harry, surely? — was dragging him across the pavement, and now it was hoisting him into the air.

  Jem screamed.

  High above him he could see the drooling mouth of the tyrannosaur like a hole in the sky. Below that were its fiddly claws . . . and in its claws was Little Harry. The leash that Jem had fastened to Little Harry’s wrist was still there, tangled around one of the claws. When Jem had tugged on his end of the leash earlier, it wasn’t Little Harry who had pulled back; it was the tyrannosaur. And now Jem was dangling from that leash, somewhere in the region of the dinosaur’s scaly and surprisingly noisy belly.

  That’s a hungry dinosaur, thought Jem. In a minute it will be less hungry. Which will be thanks to me. But not in a good way.

  He could have undone the leash. He could have dropped to the ground and run away.

  But his brother was at the other end of the leash, so this is what Jem did. He gathered his courage and his strength. He took a handful of the leash and pulled himself upward. Hand over hand, he climbed up the leash to where his brother was trapped in the hellish claws of the infernal beast.

  Gasping for breath, aching in every muscle, Jem hauled himself higher and higher until the moment came when he would have to touch the claw itself. He closed his eyes. He reached out. Cold and hard as stone it was, but moving, like a living statue. He reached over with his other hand and touched something warm . . . Little Harry.

  “Dinosaur!” yelled Little Harry, helpfully.

  “I did notice,” said Jem.

  For someone who was trapped within the black claws and cold flesh of a dinosaur fist, Little Harry looked remarkably cheery.

  “Dinosaur!” he reiterated.

  “Honestly,” said Jem, “I know.” The jaws lurched forward and sideways and back. Jem felt seasick. But he tried to keep thinking. There must be some way to get Little Harry down.

  The great jaws closed up, teeth grinding, breath steaming. The massive eyes swivelled and descended. The dinosaur was staring at Little Harry.

  “Dinosaur!”

  An oily rumble came from somewhere deep within the dark well of its throat.

  “Shhh, Harry.”

  “Dinosaur!”

  The same rumble from the same dark well.

  “Dinosaur!”

  There it was again.

  Little Harry, thought Jem, and the dinosaur . . . They’re talking to each other.

  “Dinosaur!”

  Rumble!

  “Dinosaur!”

  Rumble!

  “Little Harry,” said Jem, “do you know this dinosaur?”

  “My dinosaur! My egg!”

  “You do know him, don’t you? Let me guess.” It had suddenly all become very clear to Jem. “You stole this egg from the Cretaceous period, when it was still an egg. You carried it round with you for days in that little red bag. You hatched the dinosaur from an egg, didn’t you, Harry? And then somehow left the baby dinosaur behind in New York when we went to El Dorado.”

  “Egg . . . all gone.” Little Harry sighed.

  “You hatched it from an egg,” said Jem, “and now it thinks that you’re its mother!”

  “Mummy!” yelled Little Harry.

  From far away Jem could hear his own mother howl, “Harrrrrryyyy!”

  But much nearer and much louder was the cheerful gurgle in the tyrannosaur’s throat. A gurgle that clearly meant “Mummy yourself” in Tyrannosaurese.

  “Oh,” said Jem, “he’s just a baby! A baby who thinks you’re his mummy. A baby who’ll follow his mummy wherever she goes.”

  Just at that moment, the dinosaur jerked its head away from them and groaned, as though it had been slapped. When it tried to turn back, it winced and groaned again, screwing up its eyes. Someone was flashing a light into them.

  It was Red. Far below them, on the pavement of Wall Street, Red was holding something above his head, something that sent a brilliant light straight into the eyes of the dinosaur.

  “Red!” said Mum. “Where on earth did you get that?”

  “The main square in El Dorado,” said Red. The object in his hand was the Diamond As Big As Your Head.

  “You stole the Diamond As Big As Your Head!” gasped Mum.

  “I didn’t steal it. I was going to give it to you. As a present. For saving my life. It’s lucky I did, too. Because this is going to save your kids’ lives.”

  He flashed it one more time. The dinosaur growled and tried to shade its eye with its tiny claw. As it did so, its claw opened, and Jem and Little Harry fell.

  “Jem! Harry!” yelled Mum and Dad as their sons whistled downward past the scales and muscles of the tyrannosaur.

  But just before they were smashed to pieces on the pavement, they were whipped back into the air again, then down again, and up again, and down again. They were still attached to the length of Cretaceous spider’s web. One end was wrapped around the tyrannosaur’s claw and the other around their bodies. They had completed history’s only Tyrannosaurus Bungee Jump.

  “OK, Little Harry,” said Jem as they stopped bouncing and finally got their feet on the ground. “We have to get to Chitty. Go on. Go.”

  “Do walkings?”

  “Yes, do walkings.”

  Little Harry toddled off across Wall Street, with the gigantic tyrannosaur obediently following behind, on the end of the leash.

  “Into the car, Little Harry! Into the car!” said Jem. Then he called, “Mum! Dad! Everyone! To Chitty!”

  Lucy was the first to realize what had happened. She explained everything. “It’s called ‘imprinting,’ ” she said. “When a bird or a reptile hatches from its egg, the first thing it sees, it calls Mummy. This dinosaur thinks Little Harry is its mummy. Jem has attached it to Little Harry using his leash. All we have to do is pop Little Harry in Chitty, drive Chitty back to the Cretaceous period, towing the tyrannosaur after us, and turn it loose. Easy.”

  “Couldn’t be easier,” said Dad.

  “Except,” said Red, “for the plane.”

  “What plane?”

  “The plane with all the guns and bombs and stuff.”

  A small red biplane, engine whining like a wasp, guns splattering the pavement with bullets, was heading down Wall Street straight for the dinosaur, which meant it was also heading straight for Chitty and Jem and Little Harry.

  “The rest of you run,” shouted Red. “I’ll try to use the diamond to dazzle the pilot.”

  The others ran and leaped into Chitty while Red angled the diamond to catch the sun.

  The plane kept coming.

  The bullets kept firing. Red lifted the diamond higher and leaned back as far as he could. Suddenly the firing stopped.

  Jem looked up to wave a thank-you to the pilot. Then he saw why the firing had stopped. It wasn’t Red’s doing at all. The pilot had stopped firing because he was going to do something much, much worse. As the plane turned overhead, flying so low that Jem could easily see its struts and wheels, the pilot leaned out and dropped a small black object over the side.

  “Bomb!” said Little Harry gleefully.

  “Bomb!” shrieked Jem.

  “Bomb!” yelled Mum.

  “Ga gooo ga!” (That was Chitty.)

  “Gurgle!” said the tyrannosaur, which — as we know — translates roughly as “MUM!,” by which he meant Little Harry. Little Harry was pointing up at the bomb as it fell. T
he tyrannosaur clearly took this as an order and, with an almighty swish of his tail, whacked the bomb back into the air, as if it had been a baseball and his tail a baseball bat.

  The bomb exploded with a puff of harmless smoke just above Federal Hall. It wasn’t much of a bomb really.

  “Quick! To Chitty!” yelled Jem.

  Little Harry climbed into the backseat, while Mum cranked her up and Dad started the engine. He drove slowly forward, giving Mum the chance to jump in. The dinosaur — still on the end of its leash, still thinking that Little Harry was its mummy — trotted along behind. Anyone who was looking out of a window that day would have seen a gold-plated vintage car carrying a family from the future towing an obedient Tyrannosaurus rex by a lead.

  “What’s that noise?” said Jem. “It sounds like rain, but I don’t feel anything.”

  No sooner had he said this than he did feel something. A long, thin strip of paper landed on his head. Another landed on Mum’s, another on the windscreen. Strips of paper were flying everywhere.

  “This is ticker tape,” said Lucy. “It’s what they used for information before computers . . .”

  A storm of ticker tape was blowing all around them.

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Look! Up there!” Every window higher than the second floor was packed with faces. When the dinosaur started its rampage on Wall Street, the people who had been out and about had fled to the subway or jumped into their cars. But everyone who was inside a building had simply run upstairs to get a better view. They guessed — rightly — that the dinosaur would not be able to manage the elevators and that they would be quite safe and thoroughly entertained if they stayed at the windows. They had seen the whole drama. They had gasped in horror when the creature had picked up the toddler; cheered encouragement when Jem had climbed up to rescue him; howled in despair when the plane dropped its bomb; and cheered again when the dinosaur had batted away the bomb with its tail.

  “A gold-plated car towing a tame dinosaur!” said one man. “I could wait a week and not see anything as surprising as this!”

  “That kid who saved the toddler!” said one woman. “Do I know him from somewhere?”

  “Sure you do. He’s Jem Diamonds,” said her friend, “the notorious getaway driver. He’s the one who outdrove the whole police department before getting away in a boat. He’s a notorious criminal.”

  “But also a hero. The way he rescued that boy. Made me wanna swoon! You got any more of that ticker tape?”

  “This is a ticker-tape parade!” said Dad. “They’re giving us a ticker-tape parade — one of the highest honours New York can bestow . . .”

  “What are they shouting?”

  “It sounds like ‘Jem, Jem, Jem, Jem,’ ” said Lucy. “Why would they be shouting ‘Jem’?”

  “They can’t be,” said Jem. “You must have misheard them.” But all the same, he stood up and waved. An almighty cheer rang up and down Wall Street.

  “At the corner of Broadway,” said Mum, “we’ll turn left into the Cretaceous period. Hold on to your hats, everybody . . .”

  So at the corner of Broadway, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang made a neat left turn and neither she nor the dinosaur was ever seen in New York again.

  On the upper storeys of the Stock Exchange, the cheering crowds didn’t notice the little redheaded boy running after the car, shouting, “Stop! Stop! Wait for me!”

  When you turn left out of Wall Street onto Broadway, the first thing you see is Trinity Church. If you are the Tootings, the next thing you see is a wide water meadow where deer go bouncing from tussock to tussock. Drive straight across that meadow, and quite quickly you come to the Ice Age (you’ll know that by the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers). If you turn left there, you’ll come to a thick forest where big shaggy mammals go shambling by. Keep going and you’ll soon find the trees get taller and denser. After that you should see a primeval swamp with triceratops lolloping around in it.

  That’s where they stopped.

  All was silent, save for the constant whir of giant dragonfly wings and the gurgling of the tyrannosaur.

  Carefully, Jem undid the leash around Little Harry’s wrist. “Say good-bye, Little Harry,” he whispered.

  “Good-bye, Little Harry,” said Little Harry, trying to climb out of the car. Clearly he was thinking of staying in the Cretaceous period with his dinosaur.

  “No, say good-bye to the dinosaur.”

  Little Harry waved to the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur put its head to one side. It seemed to know that they were about to abandon it.

  “All set?” said Dad.

  “Couldn’t we just wait a minute?” said Mum. “The poor thing looks a bit lost.”

  Even as she said this, the tyrannosaur’s nostrils twitched. It turned its head. It had seen the lolloping great triceratops, and it had thought to itself, Lunch. Its tail swung over their heads. The ground shook. It thundered toward the water’s edge. The triceratops turned slowly and saw it coming. They didn’t move. They had seen the tyrannosaur, but their brains could only do one thing at a time. At the moment they were telling their jaws to chew leaves. If there was time a bit later, their brains might think, Emergency: Better run, but it would take that message so long to travel the hundred feet to their legs that really they might just as well concentrate on chewing.

  The tyrannosaur got closer and closer.

  “This is going to be really gory!” said Lucy. “There’s going to be blood and destruction everywhere. Can we stay and watch?”

  “I really think,” said Dad, “that we should get out of here in case we end up as dessert.”

  He slammed Chitty into reverse, giving her a good run-up, and then zoomed toward the swamp, while tugging on the Chronojuster. Before they even reached it, the swamp was a frozen waste. By the time they had gone a mile across that, it was a wide prairie . . .

  “Dinosaur!” sobbed Little Harry.

  “He’ll be all right,” said Lucy, slipping an arm around her brother. “Just think about his big claws and surprisingly useful tail. He’s a happy little dinosaur — he’ll be back there now, killing and eating all kinds of other dinosaurs and having a great time . . .” But thinking about the abandoned dinosaur made her suddenly remember someone else. “Hey,” she said, “what happened to Red?”

  Millions of years in the future, Red had done his best to catch up with Chitty, but by the time he got to Broadway, she had vanished. He looked around. There was still not a soul on the streets. Alone in the middle of a vast, deserted city, hundreds of years away from the happiest time of his life, he felt lonelier than anyone has ever felt in the whole history of this world. So it’s no surprise that when, finally, someone did appear on the street, he almost ran over to them. They were a man and a woman. Almost like a mum and a dad. They seemed to be looking for something. Maybe they were even looking for a little boy. When he got closer, he recognized them. It was Lenny Man-Mountain and Bella Sposa. Bella had got rid of her wedding outfit and was now dressed all in red, wearing red sunglasses and with red-painted fingernails. Had the Tootings been there, they might have thought that she looked uncannily like Nanny. The very Nanny who, strangely unaged, was currently living in their house along with Tiny Jack.

  Even though they had recently kidnapped his friends, tied them up, and left them in a barn, he was still pleased to see their familiar faces.

  “Hi,” said Red. “Remember me?”

  “Of course I remember you.” Nanny smiled. “The boy with the lovely red hair.”

  “You recently kidnapped my friends, tied them up, and left them in a barn.”

  “So we did,” purred Nanny. “We apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused. Where are those friends now?”

  “Well,” said Red. “They sort of dumped me, I guess.”

  “Dumped you?” said Nanny. “What a pity. In that case, why not make the best of the situation and join us instead? We believe in making the best of a situation, don’t we, L
enny?”

  “We do,” said Man-Mountain. “For instance, in the current situation, people see a big, mean lizard and run away. Many times in doing so they drop their wallet, or their cash, or even their shopping, which may contain diamond bracelets, for all I know. So we pick them up before people get wise to the fact that the dinosaur is gone.”

  “And if you ask me,” said Nanny, “it is gone before it even came. Maybe it is not a real dinosaur at all, but just a hysterical illusion. The loot, however, is real, and we are grateful for your help in raking it in — as we are more than somewhat short of money at the present — thanks to this big lummox.” She jerked her thumb at Man-Mountain. “Promised me he was going to rob all the gold in the Federal Reserve Bank just for me! Said he was going to make us rich. And now look at us, picking up nickels and dimes from wallets in the street. A girl has to get used to disappointment in this life.”

  Red looked up and down deserted Broadway. He thought how happy he had been with the Tootings and Chitty. How hard life had been before they came. How they had left without even saying good-bye and forgotten all about him. Abandoned him in an empty city with no friends and no family. No one to play with. “So,” he said, “you like gold?”

  “Gold, diamonds, the secret of eternal youth — my tastes are simple,” said Nanny. “Give me gold and diamonds, and I am yours to command.”

  “Would you really?” asked Red. “Be mine to command? Just for diamonds?”

  “To be honest, it would depend on the quantity and also the size of the diamonds.”

  “What if it was a single diamond, but one as big as your head?”

  Nanny stared. Red was holding up the Diamond As Big As Your Head.

  “Kid,” she said, “I’m all yours. Just hand that over.”

  “I will if you play with me.”

  “What?”

  “I like to play games. And I’ve got no one to play with. If I give you the diamond, will you play with me?”

  “Why, sure we will play with you. We will play all kinds of games. Did you ever play bank robbers? Or blackmailers? Hijackers? We can play all these games together, can’t we, Lenny?”