Adam and the Arkonauts

by Dominic Barker

  ‘Are any of the animals under twelve years old?’ enquired Torres. ‘Because if so, they are entitled to a discount.’

  ‘They’re all eleven and a half,’ Calico Jack jumped in.

  ‘How do you –’ Adam began.

  ‘Leave this bit to me,’ his grandfather said, pushing Adam to one side. ‘I’ve been negotiating prices since before you were born.’

  One and a half minutes later, Calico Jack had convinced the Aerobus driver that, because of the extensive discounts, not only were they all entitled to go free, but Torres, in fact, owed them money.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Torres.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Calico Jack. ‘A free return journey back down the hill when we’ve finished and we’ll call it quits.’

  Torres shut the doors and the fully laden bus began to the steep climb up to Tibidabo.

  ‘We’re going to rescue Buenos Sueños!’ cheered the prisoners.

  Above them on the roof they heard the animals thumping about in excitement.

  Only Adam felt apprehensive. He remembered what had happened the last time he had been to Tibidabo. He had gone with the Doctor but he had returned alone. How many of the brave creatures alongside him would be coming back? he wondered.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, young ’un?’ said Calico Jack. ‘You look like you’ve lost a penny and found out you’ve wet yourself. Cheer up.’

  Adam managed a weak smile. Until the Doctor and his mother were free, and Buenos Sueños saved, he could manage no more than that.

  The bus creaked its way round another hairpin bend as it rose towards an encounter with Professor Scabellax.

  .

  CHAPTER 30

  Adam led the way, leaving Señor Torres at the final bus stop waiting for their return and still trying to puzzle out why he owed Calico Jack money.

  Adam suggested that he and Anna go ahead with the animals while Calico Jack stayed a little distance behind with the ex-prisoners. He didn’t want them all to see him communicating with the animals. He told Calico Jack he’d send Sniffage as soon as they’d got an idea of the task they faced in trying to get into Scabellax’s base and rescue the Doctor and his mother. Calico Jack gave his grandson a nod of approval and immediately took command of the men.

  Adam and Anna led the animals in an advance party. Once he was out of earshot, Adam told Sniffage and the dogs to scout the route ahead. The dogs would smell any black-clad guards Scabellax had lying in wait for them long before the guards saw them. Then Adam beckoned to Gogo and Pozzo, who flew down and settled, one on each arm.

  ‘How many parrots does it take to change a light bulb?’ Gogo squawked before Adam had a chance to give them any instructions.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Adam sighed.

  ‘Not nearly as many as it takes to change a heavy one.’

  Adam couldn’t help smiling. ‘Now I need you to do something for me,’ he said sternly.

  For once, the parrots decided not to continue their repartee.

  ‘Fly over the wood,’ said Adam. ‘Then come back and tell me if you see anything unusual.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said the parrots. And two green blurs disappeared high into the sky.

  ‘I hope you realise,’ mewed Malibu, who had been dragged along against his wishes by Sniffage and who was now padding along beside Adam with a distinctly hurt air, ‘that some of us are missing winks in order to be here.’

  Next to him, Simia snorted. ‘Missing winks will be good for you, cat,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know how long it has taken me to get into a sleep pattern?’ Malibu hissed. ‘All this disturbance could send me back to insomnia.’ And the cat shuddered as he recalled those dark days.

  Adam had to ask. ‘You,’ he said incredulously, ‘suffered from insomnia?’

  Malibu nodded. ‘Sometimes I’d sleep as few as eighteen hours in a day. It had a terrible effect on my eye–paw coordination. I need at least twenty-two to perform at my best – that’s what my sleep therapist said.’

  Simia was beside herself with anger. ‘When there are animals suffering all over the world, you were going to a sleep therapist?’

  ‘If I woke up in time,’ the cat replied haughtily.

  Adam was glad to see Sniffage charging towards him, a large stick in his mouth and his brown-and-white ears flapping wildly in the breeze. Hopefully his arrival would put an end to the argument.

  ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ announced Sniffage, dropping the stick. ‘There’s some really smelly dead things around here. And lots of sticks. It’s great.’

  ‘Sniffage!’ said Adam sternly. ‘I hope you didn’t let yourself get distracted by the dead things and the sticks.’

  ‘Yeah! Yeah! Distracted from what?’

  Adam sighed. ‘Distracted from finding out how many guards there were outside the wood.’

  ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ said Sniffage. ‘There’s four guards on the edge of the wood. They’ve got guns but no sticks. And none of them is dead. Yeah!’

  ‘Thank you, Sniffage,’ said Adam.

  Sausage, who had been scouting with Sniffage but had been delayed in returning on account of his little legs, finally arrived.

  ‘Yeah! Yeah! Look at this stick,’ Sniffage said to him. ‘Quality workmanship.’

  Sausage examined the stick.

  ‘You don’t get sticks like that any more,’ he agreed.

  And both dogs were lost in thought as they remembered being puppies, when sticks were solid and the smells were nastier.

  Two green blurs shooting out of the sky signalled the return of the parrots.

  ‘I say, I say, I say,’ chirped Gogo. ‘What sits in a tree and watches the ground?’

  ‘A parrot with a broken television.’

  ‘No, a guard with a gun.’

  ‘How many did you see?’ asked Adam. ‘There were four in the trees last time, and they were all deaf.’

  The two parrots nodded. ‘That would explain why they didn’t laugh at our jokes.’

  Not necessarily, thought Adam.

  Anna had been watching the exchange between Adam and the parrots with increasing agitation. Now she signed to Adam that he needed to hurry up.

  ‘Was there any other sign the guards couldn’t hear you?’ he asked the parrots.

  ‘They didn’t turn round when we squawked right behind them.’

  This was good enough for Adam. Gogo and Pozzo had the loudest squawks he’d ever heard. He turned to Anna.

  ‘There are four guards at the edge of the wood and another four in the trees around the clearing where the entrance to Scabellax’s base is.’

  ‘How do we get past them?’ signed Anna.

  It was a good question. Adam didn’t think they could use the army ants again, because the guards would be expecting . . .

  He stopped himself. Of course. Had the guards been defeated by humans, they’d have made sure they were better prepared for another assault by the same method, so the next time they would defeat their enemy. But the guards were overpowered by animals. They would assume that it was just bad luck, that it could never happen again, that lightning wouldn’t strike twice – because it would never occur to them that the first attack had been planned. Humans thought that only other humans could plan. Adam knew this wasn’t the case. Maybe he could use the guards’ arrogance against them.

  He put the white box that contained the Special Ant Service on the ground. The troops, led by General Lepti, marched out and formed themselves in serried ranks. Adam wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered the squad being bigger. The General saluted.

  ‘General Lepti,’ Adam signalled, ‘I need you to take out four guards at the edge of the wood.’

  The General scratched his thorax.

&nbs
p; ‘Four,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ Adam signalled.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Adam couldn’t believe it. He had never known the Special Ant Service to pause before embarking on a mission.

  ‘Trouble is,’ signalled General Lepti, ‘more than half the troops are down with leaf poisoning. Still back at the boat. Down to bare bones here. Skeleton staff. To take out four guards I’d need a minimum of one thousand active ants. Any less and I’d be sending my men to face certain death. No commander can do that.’

  ‘How many ants have you got?’ signalled Adam. He couldn’t believe that his plan wasn’t going to work.

  ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine precisely,’ reported the General.

  ‘Is one more that important?’ Adam asked.

  ‘It is crucial in order to maintain our attack and defence formations,’ said General Lepti.

  It was at this moment Private Mandible emerged from Adam’s pocket to see what was going on. Adam breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

  ‘You need one more army ant to carry out the mission,’ he told General Lepti. ‘You are an army ant,’ he told Private Mandible. ‘Can you see a solution to the problem here?’

  Both ants shook their legs to indicate they didn’t. Adam explained.

  ‘Have a damned conchie in my ranks?’ General Lepti’s legs waved furiously. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Ditch my moral objections to violent solutions which can never work in the longterm and inevitably lead only to further violence?’ signalled Private Mandible. ‘Never.’

  Even with six legs this took quite a lot of time to say.

  It was clear that they were at an impasse. Adam could think of no way to break it. However, Anna, who had been following the exchange, had a very simple idea. She approached the Special Ant Service, who were still standing in their serried ranks and picked up an ant at random. She held it out in the palm of her hand for both General Lepti and Private Mandible to see. Then she raised her other hand and indicated that she was about to squash it.

  ‘Stop!’ signalled General Lepti and Private Mandible at the same time.

  Anna stopped and waited.

  ‘This is blackmail, pure and simple,’ the General fulminated. ‘You’re threatening that if I don’t allow Private Mandible to rejoin the SAS, then you will squash one of my own soldiers.’

  ‘And,’ added Private Mandible waving his legs extravagantly to show his distress (sadly this kind of exaggerated waving meant nothing to Anna – the subtle nuances of insect communication were lost on her), ‘you’re saying that if I don’t rejoin the SAS and risk taking part in further acts of violence, then I will be partly responsible for the death of a former comrade.’

  Anna nodded calmly.

  ‘I . . . I . . . I . . .’ General Lepti was lost for legs.

  Anna began to lower her hand towards the helpless ant. Army ants are very dangerous when working together, but when one is isolated from his fellow soldiers he is tremendously vulnerable. Her hands got closer and closer together. Any moment now they would clamp shut.

  ‘Stop!’ signalled General Lepti and Private Mandible, exposing their thoraxes to indicate surrender. ‘We agree!’

  Anna placed the soldier ant back with his platoon.

  General Lepti decided to welcome his erstwhile comrade back into the platoon in true military fashion.

  ‘Private Mandible,’ he commanded furiously, ‘I demand to know what you are doing out of the ranks.’

  ‘I –’ began Private Mandible.

  ‘Don’t answer, you horrible little ant,’ interrupted General Lepti. ‘Rejoin the platoon immediately. Hop, two, three, four, five, six.’

  So Private Mandible became the first ever pacifist army ant to return to active service.

  ‘You wouldn’t really have squashed one of the SAS, would you?’ Adam asked Anna.

  She winked.

  Adam decided the wink meant no. It made him feel better. But he didn’t know how long the uneasy truce would last. He resolved to get the assault under way immediately.

  ‘General Lepti, commence the attack,’ he ordered. ‘When you have finished, return to the Ark of the Parabola and we will rendezvous with you there.’

  ‘Yessir!’ signalled General Lepti. ‘Special Ant Service, forward!’

  The ants marched off to battle. Adam, Anna, the Arkonauts and the other dogs sneaked up to the position where, only a few days before, Adam had crouched with the Doctor.

  Again the guards were vigilant. Again the guards were armed and dangerous. And again they were no match for the Special Ant Service.

  ‘Aiieeeeee!’

  ‘Owwwww!’

  ‘Yaaaaaaaa!’

  ‘Aiieeeeeee!’

  Frantically trying to fight off the army ants, the guards ran back and forth, little realising that they were running into General Lepti’s reserves. More and more ants swarmed up their legs and over their bodies. They ran for their lives. The way into the woods was clear.

  But Simia was not about to let anybody go in yet.

  ‘If I let a human like you in,’ she chattered to Adam, ‘you would mess everything up, clumping about on the ground with your oh-so-well-evolved upright walking. This is a job for a creature who had the good sense to stay in the trees. Wait here until I return.’

  ‘But I can’t let you go on your own,’ Adam protested. ‘They’ve got guns.’

  ‘If you said they had tails I might be nervous,’ Simia shot back. ‘Tails are useful in the trees. But you humans had to get rid of yours. And as for guns. Tch! I’ll have knocked them unconscious before they even know I’m there.’

  Without allowing Adam another word, Simia headed towards the wood, clambered expertly up the first tree she came to and disappeared into the canopy.

  Adam looked at Anna questioningly. Did she think Simia would be all right? Had he done the right thing in not going with the monkey? The girl shrugged in reply. They would have to wait and see.

  Adam looked up at the sky. It felt like the day had lasted for ever, but it was only mid-afternoon. The sun still beat down mercilessly upon them and its heat showed no sign of waning. Knowing that they had to wait, Adam and the other Arkonauts tried to search out some cooling shade, but the power of the Buenos Sueños sun was so strong that they could find very little respite.

  So it was to a dry and thirsty group that Simia returned less than half an hour later. The monkey dropped calmly out of a tree and loped leisurely over to Adam.

  ‘Tch Tch!’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ll be doing any more evolving for at least a couple of hours.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Adam turned to Sniffage. ‘Go and get Calico Jack and the others. We’re ready for the final assault.’

  .

  CHAPTER 31

  The last time Adam had stood where he was now, he had witnessed the Doctor’s capture by Professor Scabellax. He remembered that awful feeling of shock and helplessness, and, above all, the loneliness that had engulfed him when he had seen the Doctor disappear into the base of his sworn enemy. But this time the echoes of those feelings were mixed with hope as he watched Calico Jack, who seemed to be getting younger by the minute, scurry back from the hatch that led into Professor Scabellax’s base.

  ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid, young ’un,’ he said.

  Crouched next to Adam, Anna also waited for the answer. Next to Anna, Malibu was much less interested and demonstrated this by sleeping. Alongside the cat were Sniffage and Sausage. Simia kept watch in the trees overhead. The other dogs and the prisoners had fanned out around the edge of the circular clearing.

  ‘It’s made of unbreakable glass, and there’s a guard posted underneath.’

  ‘Do you mean we’re going to have to knock?’

  ‘Kno
ck,’ sneered Calico Jack. ‘Knock, young ’un? That’ll give away the element of surprise.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything else. Can you?’

  Calico Jack had to acknowledge that he couldn’t.

  They all looked at each other with grim expressions. They had come so far, but it would all be for nothing if they couldn’t save the city and rescue Adam’s parents. They racked their brains, desperately searching for a solution. While they were doing this, Malibu woke up.

  ‘Hey, did someone die? What’s with the long faces?’ he mewed.

  ‘Nothing that would bother you,’ said Adam, suddenly angry. ‘You only worry about yourself and your sleep.’

  Malibu was most put out by this.

  ‘I am a very giving cat,’ he yowled casually at Adam. ‘My therapist said that’s why I get so tired.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Adam. ‘If you’re so giving, why don’t you give us a hand getting into the base?’

  ‘Why don’tcha just open the door?’

  Adam could hardly contain his anger. ‘Because it’s shut and locked from below. And the glass is the thickest in the world, so we can’t break in. That’s why we can’t just open the door. And you’d have known all that if you hadn’t been asleep.’

  Malibu was impervious to Adam’s anger. ‘Did ya say glass?’ he said.

  Adam nodded angrily. ‘You know I did.’

  ‘And does that mean that a guard could look up and out of the base through the door.’

  ‘You know it does.’

  ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ purred Malibu. ‘This should be sooooo easy.’

  ‘What do you mean, easy?’

  ‘Do you know what my final great role was?’

  Adam could feel himself going red. ‘I don’t want to talk about your stupid film career!’

  ‘I played “limping cat” in the latest Harry Potter movie. The critics said that I brought a previously unseen feline poignancy to the screen.’

  ‘I’m not going to talk to you any more. All you think about is yourself.’

  ‘As Daniel said, “Nobody can resist a cute cat with a limp.”’