And the sound of eight people trying to get through a rather small door. And not all succeeding.
And the sound of a running beast the size of a kangaroo but greenish and with much bigger teeth trying to get in too –
‘Hey!’ said Rosetti, counting heads in the half-dark. ‘Are we all here? Onyx!’
‘Here.’
‘Owen.’
‘Here.’
‘Miss Davies.’
‘Here.’
‘Mr Sartorius.’
‘Here.’
‘Trym.’
‘Yea verily.’
‘Otto.’
‘Here.’
‘Taxman Cosm.’
‘Grrr.’
‘Rraah.’
‘Who’s growling?’ Pause, for counting heads. ‘There are nine. One extra. Ooer. It’s the kangaroo thing.’
‘Help!’ cried Otto.
‘Aiee!’ cried Cosm. The door burst open. The Headmaster-Designate and his Deputy rushed back into the Cretaceous. The kangaroo thing rushed after them, gnashing its awful teeth. ‘Shut the door and lock it,’ said Miss Davies. The light from outside was the colour of fire and blood. ‘Three minutes to starfall.’
‘Eek.’ Everyone crowded on to the chair. Miss Davies picked up the dove prodder and prodded.
No flap, no squawk, no nests in the mind. Miss Davies pulled out the basket and checked.
‘Whoops,’ she said. ‘Still asleep. Do something, Trym!’
‘Mmyes!’ said Trym, once again sucking air through his teeth in the manner of an Expert. ‘They must awake naturally, or they will be too tired to travel. And we perish wyth alle lyfe on Erthe!’
‘Do relax and talk properly,’ said Miss Davies. ‘We’ve got three minutes.’
‘Two and a half,’ said Owen.
‘Thank you, Owen,’ said Miss Davies, giving him her beautiful smile. ‘Anything can happen in two and a half minutes!’
A few minutes under 65 million years later, Founder’s Day had dawned grey and rainy. Flags whipped from the summit of the Tower of Flight. The chamber pot placed by the Climbing Club on the topmost pinnacle had been removed. Strings of bunting crisscrossed the Quad. Pupils in their best clothes milled around, waiting for their parents, or the judges who had condemned them to the Skool, or officers from the various elite military squads that found Abbot Dagger’s a great place to pick up tough recruits. The drawbridge was lowered, and on every hill in the Badlands armed guards had been posted.
At nine o’clock, a brilliant light winked from the heliograph station on the Edge.
‘Ah,’ said the Headmaster, reaching for his hairbrush and sweeping his hair up into something that looked like a white wave breaking. ‘Here come the parents and so on. Nine more eggs and a glass of champagne for me nerves, and a good time to be had by all. Though I do wish,’ he said, a cloud passing over his noble features, ‘that they would hurry up with the Greyte Cup!’
In Mato’s lair, Nurse Drax was keeping very still in case any part of her slipped. Her make-up was perfect. Her hair was lacquered into the texture of whipped granite, and her white cap of office was attached with hand-burnished brass pins. Her apron crackled with starch, and her brogues were polished so brightly that they reflected (had she but known it) her grubby pink wool knickers. ‘Mmwah,’ she said, blowing herself a sticky red kiss in the mirror. ‘Mato, you are the very picture of beauty. By this day fortnight, you will be Madame Cosm!’ She frowned. ‘But where is everybody?’
The great clock in the Tower of Flight stood at ten to ten as the Headmaster swept down the steps at the east end of the Hall of Session. The Skool was milling around the floor, a mass of upturned faces shining with soap and expectation.
‘Hail!’ cried the Head.
‘Hail, Head!’ cried the Skool.
The Head’s gaze swept the assembled staff. ‘There do not seem to be enough masters.’
‘All present except Dr Cosm and Otto –’
The Head broke into a genuine smile of delight –
‘– and Davies and Sartorius.’
The Head’s huge eyebrows drew together. ‘Dear me,’ he boomed. ‘Ah, well. We will proceed without them. No doubt they will be back, ah, in time, haha.’
‘Er,’ said a Security Master. ‘You are looking well nice, Headmaster. But –’
‘Silence!’ cried the Head. ‘Now –’
‘The robes, great, fabulous,’ said the Security Master. ‘But the pyjamas?’
The Head looked down. A striped knee heavily stained with cocoa looked back. By a perfectly ordinary oversight he had forgotten to put on his clothes. He had things on his mind. Such as why the Skolars had not shown up with the Cup. And how he was going to delay events to give them the best possible chance of doing it. Like a vast, silent engine, the great brain worked it all out, and came up with a solution. Delay. Delay was the only hope. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I think we must have a revised timetable. Take this down, SM, and nail it to the Hall Door.’
The Head spoke. The Security Master wrote. Five minutes later the Skool crowded excitedly round the door.
10.00 Arrival and Reception of Governors and Visitors
10.30 Marching and Flag Display on Parade Ground
11.15 Massed choirs sing Skool Song
11.30 Speeches, Reports from Departments in Hall of Session
12.30 Fetching of Greyte Cup. Awarding of Cups in Hall of Session
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Exhibitions
18.00 Sunset
(signed)
S. Temple, Headmaster
‘What about those doves?’ said Onyx, fretting.
The noise outside was huge and horrible. Animals were roaring, trees were falling, rocks were rolling and lumps of the atmosphere were catching fire with a sound like extra large blowtorches.
‘Still having their nap,’ said Miss Davies, hiding a yawn with her beautiful fingers. ‘Still, let us prepare ourselves for Time Travel. Eh, Trym?’
‘We’re all going to die,’ whimpered that twisty servitor. ‘Talk to your father, for pity’s sake.’
Miss Davies closed her eyes. Then she opened them and shook her head. ‘Not at home,’ she said. ‘I know! We’ll sing the Skool Song.’
‘Will that help?’ said Trym.
‘It will keep our spirits up,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Now. A-three, four!’
The brave voices of the pupils rose thin but tuneful in the roar of the collapsing planet. It seemed that something or someone was banging on the dovecote roof.
Probably Cosm, thought Rosetti. Or maybe Otto.
‘Sing on!’ cried Miss Davies. ‘Sing on!’
Trapped in the Cretaceous, thirty seconds from Meteor Impact, the Polymathic Skolars of Abbot Dagger’s Academy sang on.
The Skool clock struck ten. The Governors’ steam bus rumbled over the drawbridge.
The gates swung open. The Skool was revealed, drawn up in ranks in the yard.
‘Ugh,’ said Commissioner Manacle.
‘And here comes the Head,’ said the Colonel. ‘Strange trousers.’
‘Ordinary trousers,’ said Lady Squee. ‘Back to front.’
‘Genius,’ said Inkon Stimp, R.A. ‘Absent-minded, of course.’
‘I’d rather he was just absent,’ said the Colonel.
‘Ha ha,’ said the Commissioner.
‘Ha ha,’ said Lady Squee.
‘Ha ha,’ said Barry Duggan, scanning the crowd. ‘Where’s my boys?’
The steam bus stopped. A green light came on over the door.
‘Ready?’ said the Colonel. ‘Out we go. But where,’ he said, in a low, puzzled bark, ‘is Dr Cosm?’
Doctor Cosm was pretty close in space, but 65 million years away in Time, sitting on the roof of a tumbledown dovecote besieged by meat-eating dinosaurs in a burning cycad grove surrounded by erupting volcanoes into which a very large meteor was about to smash at fifty times the speed of sound.
‘Ooer,’ said Otto, as yellow teeth cl
ashed by Cosm’s foot.
‘Throw a tile at it!’ shrieked Cosm. ‘At it! Left a bit! Right a bit!’
‘I’m doing my best,’ said Otto sulkily, rubbing his throwing arm. ‘You throw something.’
‘Me? Throw? I’m Headmaster Designate and soon to be Master of the Universe!’
‘You look like lunch to that thing,’ said Otto gloomily.
‘Shut up!’
Lady Squee looked at the watch on her big hairy wrist. ‘We are running late, I see.’
‘Thirty-three minutes,’ said Professor Tube, sniffing.
‘Time is a fantasy,’ said the Head in Ancient Egyptian.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Tube. The Head translated. ‘This is not the view of Dr Cosm,’ said Tube, sniffing wetly. ‘Doctor Cosm is punctual.’
‘Not today,’ said the Head, with a hearty laugh.
Out in the Quad, the Skool waved flags, spelling out messages of greeting. HELLO GOVNERS, said the flags. WELKUM.
‘Oh dear,’ said the Head in English. ‘Actually this flag stuff is under the direct supervision of Dr Cosm.’
‘Woss the problem?’ said Barry Duggan.
The sounds outside the dovecote were very loud indeed now. Also, it was getting hotter.
But this was not what was worrying Onyx.
‘We’re going to be so late!’ she said. ‘What will happen to the Skool?’
‘And the Universe,’ said Owen.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Davies, almost convincingly.
‘That dove blinked!’ cried Owen.
‘I can sort of feel it coming back,’ said Rosetti. ‘It’s got some way to go, though.’
‘Which is more than you can say for that meteor,’ said Owen. ‘What did you say, Trym?’
‘Just blubbering,’ said Trym.
‘Quite understandable,’ said Rosetti, over the roar of cycads catching fire.
∗
The Skool Song was sung:
‘WE HAVE NOT BEEN VERY GOOD,’ sang the Skool.
‘WE HAVE NOT DONE RIGHT.
WE HAVE BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD
AND SET OUR SCHOOLS ALIGHT.
BUT OUR HEARTS ARE VERY HIGH,
PROUD AND CLEAN ARE WE.
O YES WE ARE HAPPY NOW
AT OUR AKADEMEE.
DAGGA DAGGA DAGGA DAGGA
SKOOL-A-SKOOL-A-SKOOL-A-SKOOL!’
‘Goodness,’ said Lady Squee, sticking her thick fingers in her hairy ears.
‘Barbaric,’ said the Professor.
‘Hmmph,’ said the Colonel. ‘What’s next?’
‘Speeches. You’re first, Colonel.’
‘Of course,’ said the Colonel, looking pleased. He groped in his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of notes.
‘Followed,’ said the Head, ‘by Awarding of Cups. Then Lunch.’
‘Ah!’ said Lady Squee, Commissioner Manacle and Barry Duggan.
‘But do not hurry with your speech, Colonel,’ said the Head, looking furtively at his watch. ‘Ononono no. Tell us about the Soldier’s Life. In detail.’
‘Terribly boring,’ said the Colonel, modestly but falsely.
‘I know,’ said the Head, who was feeling the suspense. He strode to the edge of the dais. ‘RIGHT?’ he bellowed.
‘RIGHT!’ bellowed the Skool.
‘OK, Colonel, you’re on,’ said the Head, stepping back with the air of one introducing a doomed gladiator to the Roman Arena.
‘Girls and boys, staff, parents and fellow Governors,’ said the Colonel, pasting a smile to his face. ‘Have you ever considered what Education really is?’
The staff, pupils, parents and Governors reached for packets of sweets, chewing gum and comics. They had not considered. They did not actually care.
It was going to be a long, long Founder’s Day.
‘One dove awake,’ said Owen.
BOOM, went something outside, either a dinosaur leaping or a tree falling, nobody was going to check which. Thin screams from the roof.
‘Another one’s woken up!’ said Onyx. ‘And another! Oo!’
‘Help,’ said a voice on the roof.
‘Who’s that?’ said Owen.
‘Doctor Cosm,’ said a thin, humble voice. ‘And Otto.’
‘Be quiet. We’re trying to think.’
‘Yes, Owen,’ said Dr Cosm. ‘Sorry you were troubled, Owen. Do you think you could possibly let us in, Owen?’
‘No,’ said Owen.
Roar, said the world outside. Howl, crunch.
‘Bit of a personality change there,’ said Rosetti. ‘Now. You were saying?’
‘We’ve got to go back almost all the way to Home Time and put the Cup back in the Sealed Room five minutes before it’s time to collect it.’
‘If enough doves wake up.’
‘The first one’s gone back to sleep.’
‘Oh.’
‘But look at those two!’
‘They blinked! So did that one! We’re off!’
‘Ninthly,’ the Colonel was saying, ‘we must consider what to do with Johnny Foreigner. Johnny Foreigner is not like us…’
‘He is foreign,’ said a voice in the crowd.
‘… he is foreign,’ said the Colonel, who had not heard.
If anyone had been listening, they would no doubt have been rather shocked. Luckily, hardly anyone was. Cookery II had smuggled in a haunch of venison, which they were roasting over a bright fire of coals. Carpentry IX were putting the finishing touches to a ladder/bridge combination that they intended to use in a bold escape attempt should the speech go on till midnight. The Footerers had recovered their energy after the Old Boy’s Bloodbath, and were getting restless.
‘Tenthly,’ said the Colonel –
‘Gosh this is boring,’ said the Head, unfortunately in English.
‘Ffft,’ said the Colonel, a pale steam of fury jetting from his ears.
‘’S’ all right,’ said Lady Squee, waking from a peaceful slumber with a creak of stressed tweed. ‘He’ll be gorn soon. And we’ll have Dr Cosm instead. Barry’s brought the contracts for sacking the silly old Head and signing up Cosm.’
‘Too right,’ said Barry Duggan.
‘Dr Cosm!’ cried Miss Davies merrily. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘Dunno,’ said Dr Cosm in a strange, thin voice.
The dovecote was once again in its untidy corner of the Academy farmyard. The doves were sitting on the roof cooing. The children were breathing in the normal air and feeling delighted that they were not being extinguished by meteors, sacrificed in caves, drowned by floodwaters, looted by Vandals, burned in cathedrals, chopped up by French soldiers or having to smell the house of Abbot Dagger.
‘Right. Rosetti, here’s the Cup. Remember the opening instructions for the Sealed Room? Off you go, full speed!’ cried Miss Davies. ‘Onyx, spread the news! Owen, help her!’ She waved to her departing Skolars, and turned to tidy up the dovecote.
‘What about us?’ said the oddly thin voice of Dr Cosm.
‘What indeed?’ said Miss Davies.
‘I mean look at him,’ said Dr Cosm, pointing at Otto.
‘And look at him,’ said Otto, pointing at Dr Cosm.
‘Hmm,’ said Miss Davies. As the two men stood in front of the dovecote door, she could see the keyhole through their bodies. ‘You are a bit… well, see-through. I think part of you might have rubbed off on Time. In fact, you are timeworn.’
‘I insist that you do something,’ said Cosm.
‘We could build you in to a house and use you as a window,’ said Miss Davies.
‘Or feed you lettuce seeds and use you as a mobile greenhouse,’ said Wrekin Sartorius.
‘Brilliant!’ said Miss Davies.
Cosm cracked. ‘Pity me!’ he cried.
‘Pleease,’ said Otto.
‘Ah!’ said Miss Davies. ‘The magic word!’
Wrekin Sartorius stepped back, frowning. ‘I’ll paint them,’ he said.
‘Wha?’
&nb
sp; ‘They’re see-through but solid,’ said Wrekin. ‘They just need filling in a bit.’
‘You’re brilliant,’ said Miss Davies, looking at him with worshipping golden eyes.
‘No, you are,’ said Wrekin, looking back at her with adoring brown ones.
‘No, you.’
‘No, you.’
‘If you have quite finished?’ said Cosm.
Wrekin whipped out a portable paintbox and went to work on Cosm’s flabby, half-visible features.
‘One thing,’ said Miss Davies.
‘Hm?’ said Dr Cosm.
‘If anyone ever says you’re no oil painting, they’ll be right. But then again, they’ll be wrong.’
‘Boys and girls!’ cried the Head. ‘Put out your cooking fires, stop that brawling and enough of these speeches!’ He turned a little pale. The hour had come: he could put it off no longer. He gazed out at the crowd, steeling himself for the worst. Then something caught his eye at the back. Something was bouncing. Onyx, with both her thumbs firmly up!
‘Wahey!’ cried the Head in Zulu, and did a handspring.
‘Wha?’ said the Colonel, scowling.
‘Something marvellous has happened!’ cried the Head. He smoothed his gown. ‘It is time for the Awarding of Cups. Ho for the Sealed Room,’ he said, and set off. So rapid was his progress and so unmistakable his errand that the whole Skool followed him with a roar, the Skolars in the lead, until they stood in front of the monk’s head.
‘I make the Movements!’ cried the Head. ‘Look away.’
Everyone looked away. Though of course the Skolars knew perfectly well that he was taking the dagger from the monk’s teeth, sticking it up the monk’s right nostril, giving it a half turn, waiting for the mouth to fall open, grasping the tongue and pulling it sharply to the right, revealing –
‘Atchoo!’ cried Barry Duggan.
For the door had swung open, and from the chamber there had billowed an immense volume of choking dust.
‘Wait!’ cried the Head.
The Skool waited, not breathing, partly because of the suspense but mainly because of the dust.
Which settled.
And there in its case stood the Greyte Cup.
‘I have great pleasure in awarding the Greyte Cup for Achievement!’ cried the Head, back in the Hall of Session. ‘The winners are… The Polymathic Skolars!’
‘S’pose,’ said the Governors.
Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail Page 13