Cosmic (8 page)

My first day of taikonaut training, we had to be at the launch site before dawn. I was really excited. Florida was really sleepy. It was so dark we couldn’t tell who else was there. There was just a bunch of yawning, stretching shadows. Even the Possibility Building didn’t look that solid, until the sun rolled up and peeled a strip of shadow off its back, as though it was a huge red banana. And then it tore up all the other shadows like tissue paper and there was everyone unwrapped on the tarmac, like surprises.

Hasan and his father were sitting in a golf buggy. “I enjoy riding in it so much,” said Eddie, “I decide to buy one for my dear Hasan.” Hasan was at the controls. He kept driving it round in little circles to amuse himself. “Enough,” said Eddie. “You make my head spin.”

Monsieur Martinet was wearing a T-shirt that said “Vote Martinet.” I think Samson One saw me looking at
it, because he smiled at me and then rolled his eyes. I’ve seen other dads do this to my dad sometimes when we’re out shopping with Mom. It’s like a secret dad sign or something. For a second I felt truly dadly so I rolled my eyes right back at him.

Then Dr. Drax arrived. “Sorry to drag you all out so early,” she said. “Today is your first day as trainee taikonauts, and we’re going to begin with a nice, gentle exercise in team building, problem solving and decision making. Very easy. Follow me, please.”

Eddie offered her a lift in the back of his new golf buggy. She said, “How kind,” and they all trundled off round the far side of the building. The rest of us tried to keep up on foot.

When we caught up with them, Dr. Drax was pointing out into the desert. “Look,” she said. “The shadow of the Possibility.” The building’s shadow stretched out into the desert, long and straight like a road made of ink. “A road that is pointing to something. Something I’d like you all to go and find and bring back for me.”

“What kind of thing?” asked Samson Two.

“Oh, nothing much. A flag. Just an ordinary little flag. It should be easy enough to spot. There’s nothing else out there. All you have to do is follow the shadow.”

Everyone stared out into the desert. There really wasn’t
anything out there. Except geology. Miles and miles and miles of wind erosion and salt deposits.

“Hasan would like to use his new golf buggy, if you don’t mind,” said Eddie.

Dr. Drax laughed and explained that this wouldn’t be possible. “It’s not a race. I want you all to stick together. And work as a team. I’ve got you a little present to help you along….” I thought she was going to cough up at least a jeep, and maybe some weaponry. But no. She handed Please-Call-Me-Monsieur Martinet something that looked like a massive firework. “This,” she said, “is a distress flare. If you set it off we will see it, no matter how far away you are. And we’ll come and get you right away. We don’t want you to come to any harm.”

“Thank you,” said Monsieur Martinet. “I will use it wisely.”

“Of course, if you do set this off, that will mean you have failed in your mission. And I’ll have to find myself a brand-new crew. So if you use the flare, you lose the rocket. All righty?”

I just could not wait to walk off into the desert. The others weren’t so keen. Samson One wanted to go and get protective clothing, water, sunblock, hats.

“And what if it takes longer than a day?” said Eddie.
“Maybe we should get tents. And tinned food. And plates. Because when you eat on the beach, sand gets into your food. It must be even worse in the desert.”

“This is turning into a shopping trip!” said Florida. “I love it!”

I said, “Can’t we just go
now
?!” and realized straightaway that this lacked dadliness so I said, “I have actually organized desert expeditions before so I know a bit about it. And in my experience, the sooner you set off the better.”

Everyone stared at me. “You’ve organized a desert expedition before?” said Monsieur Martinet. “I thought you were a taxi driver before.”

“This was before before, before I was a taxi driver.”

“You never told me that before, Daddy,” said Florida with a big phony smile. “A desert expedition? Honest?”

“Yeah. So…let’s go.”

“I really think we ought to prepare,” said Samson One.

“In fact,” said Samson Two, “Mr. Digby may have a point. The only clue we have about the location of the flag is that it lies somewhere on the line of the building’s shadow. At the moment—just after dawn—the shadow is at its longest. As the day goes on, the shadow will get shorter. We’ll have less shade. And less information.”

“That,” I said, “is completely what I was saying. Let’s go!”

Inside the shadow it was surprisingly cool. Florida padded along next to me, going on about how she’d been promised a thrill ride. “This is not a ride,” she said. “This is a punishment.”

“Florida, it’s Friday morning, you’re supposed to be in double math. Instead you’re walking in the Gobi Desert.”

“Which you’ve done before, apparently.”

“I didn’t say I’d walked in this desert. I said I’d led an expedition across a desert. And I have.”

“What desert was it then? The Bootle Desert?”

“It was the Blasted Lands of Azeroth, actually. And it was a lot worse than this. It had giant insects, for one thing. And a portal to the evil netherlands.”

“Liam, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t call me Liam, and I’m talking about World of Warcraft.”

“Well, don’t talk about it anymore. Dads don’t. And why, by the way, are we walking in the shadow? We could be getting a tan.” As she said it she stepped out of the shadow and into the sun. From where I was standing it looked like she’d vanished completely. Then she bounced back into the shade really quickly.

“Ow, ow, do you even
know
how hot it is out there? We’re going to be cooked.”

“That’s why we’ve got to try and do this before we lose the shade.”

“And why is it so
sandy
?!” She seemed to think the Gobi Desert was my fault.

“Because the area in which we are standing was once the seabed of a great ocean that was exposed to the wind by a fall in the water level. The rocks and the mountains that were on the seabed have been broken down into sand by the wind over the last thousand million years.”

“Liam, I don’t
care
!!!”

She shouted so loud that you could hear her words moving away from us over the dunes. Then we heard something that sounded like God hoovering the world. It was the wind. A wind that threw sand at our legs and arms so hard it felt like we were being stabbed with a billion nano-knives. Sand went into your mouth and up your nostrils and, worst of all, in your eyes. We all got into a kind of scrum, with our backs to the desert and our heads in a circle. Monsieur Martinet’s face was right in my face. He snarled, “Well, Mr. Digby, you’ve done this before. What do you suggest we do now?”

I said, “Wait for the wind to die down?”

“You’ll be waiting a long time,” said Florida. “It’s been blowing for a thousand million years so far, apparently.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I felt weirdly impressed with her.
I said, “That’s an amazing thought, Florida.”

“Oh,” said Florida. “Thanks, Liam.”

I pinched her and she said, “Dad, I mean. Not Liam.” Then she put her sunglasses on and said, “Oh, that’s much better.” No one else put theirs on, but everyone stared at her. “Has no one else brought their sunglasses?”

“It was dark,” said Samson Two. “It seemed unnecessary.”

“I just thought they looked cool,” explained Florida.

“David Beckham wears sunglasses in the dark.”

“Dad,” said Hasan, “she’s got sunglasses. I want them.”

“Of course,” said Eddie. “Little girl, how much for the sunglasses?”

“I’m not selling them.”

“Mr. Digby, how much for your daughter’s sunglasses? We would like to buy them.”

“They’re not mine. They’re hers.”

“But she’s your daughter. You tell her to sell them.”

“I won’t,” I said, “but I do have a plan. My daughter was the only one sensible enough to bring sunglasses, right? So this is what we do. She wears her glasses. The rest of us cover our faces with our T-shirt or whatever and hold hands in a line, and she goes at the front and leads us to the flag.”

They were all quiet for a moment and then Samson One said, “That’s actually a good plan.”

“I used it last time I was in the desert,” I said. Which was true. I used it to get a bunch of Night Elves out of the Labyrinth of Light.

Monsieur Martinet said it was a good idea too, but he wanted Max to be the one with the glasses, “Because Max is a natural leader.”

“Maybe so,” said Florida, “but the thing is, they’re my glasses. Let’s go.”

So we set off in this conga line across the desert, while Monsieur Martinet shouted encouraging words about other people who had crossed deserts. “Mark Antony,” he said, “and Lawrence of Arabia—they were humans. We are humans. Humans can do this.”

It takes concentration to keep walking forward over soft sand when you’re blindfolded, so nobody spoke for a while, but there was a moment when everyone stopped and thought the same thing. It was the moment when we stepped out of the shadow. You didn’t need to wonder what had happened. It was like someone had pointed a flamethrower at us. I remembered that Lawrence of Arabia and Mark Antony had walked across deserts with great big armies, not with a couple of kids and their dads. And also that, by the time they finished, their armies were a lot smaller.

And then the wind dropped. And at last we could
open our eyes and see where we were. And that was bad news too.

We were standing at the bottom of a massive sand dune. A hundred-foot hill of slippy sand. You could see the wind stripping streamers of sand from the top of it. When Hasan saw the dune he started crying. “Do we have to go up there? I can’t go up there. It’s too high.”

Monsieur Martinet seemed to see this as a challenge. But not for him. For Max. “Max,” he barked, “run up the dune and see if you can see the flag.”

Max looked shocked. “Why me?”

“Max,” yelled Monsieur Martinet, “winners lead from the front.”

“But—” said Max.

“DO AS I SAY! THIS IS A QUESTION OF DISCIPLINE!”

And Max set off up the dune, all on his own, looking really, really miserable in the soft sand.

Hasan Xanadu sat down. “I’m not going up that,” he said. “Even if there are a thousand flags on the other side.”

Eddie said, “My dear Hasan doesn’t want to climb it. We must go round.”

Samson Two thought this was not a good idea. “Dr. Drax told us to follow the line of the shadow. If we veer off we might never find it again. This is a wind-drift dune. Such
dunes can be many miles long—perhaps twenty or even thirty.”

Twenty or thirty miles sounded bad. But climbing that dune looked impossible.

Max was up to his knees in sand. “I can’t do it,” he yelled. He sounded like he was going to cry.

Monsieur Martinet looked uncomfortable. Even he didn’t fancy it. “Let’s go round,” he said.

“In a barren landscape like this,” said Samson Two, “it is difficult to keep your bearings.”

“Difficult,” said Monsieur Martinet, “is what the best do best. MAX!”

“But Dr. Drax said—” pleaded Samson Two.

“Dr. Drax expects us to use our initiative,” snapped Monsieur Martinet. “Initiative is how winners win.”

I was going to say, “Yes, and getting lost in deserts is how people die.” But they’d already set off, even Samsons One and Two. Monsieur Martinet really did have impressive leadership qualities.

The dune reminded me of my dad. Sometimes if he finished work early in the summer we used to go down to the beach and do dune diving. Have you ever done this? You scramble up a dune, then you just chuck yourself off and run, with the sand giving way beneath you and your stride getting longer and longer until your legs are barely
touching the ground so it feels like you’re falling but it doesn’t matter because the sand is so soft. It’s nature’s own thrill ride.

Before I even knew I’d decided to do it, I’d joined Max halfway up the dune.

I said to him, “Are you ready for this?”

“What?”

“Dune diving. Come on—you must’ve done it before. Give me your hand.”

Looking a bit nervous, he gave me his hand. I said, “Ready?”

“What for?”

“This.”

I jumped.

Gobi Desert sand is even softer than Southport sand. At one point I sank in right to my knees. The next step, half the dune seemed to just disappear underneath me.

As we hit the bottom, the others scattered out of our way like skittles and the two of us lay there staring up at the blue sky and laughing our heads off.

Monsieur Martinet looked down at me and said, “And your point is?”

“It’s really, really good. I am sooo going to do that again.”

“Mr. Digby,” said Monsieur Martinet, “you are a child.”

I thought for a second he was on to me, but he was just being rude.

I said, “Anyone else want a go?” and started scrambling up again. When I looked back, Samson Two was following me up, and Hasan, and finally even Florida.

When we were halfway up I said, “We could do it from here. Or we could carry on to the top, look over the other side and see if we can spot the flag. And if we can’t, it doesn’t matter—we still have a monster dune dive.”

Everyone agreed and we all scrambled and crawled and helped each other up. The last few feet were the worst. I flung myself at the top of the dune and ended up flat on my face. Florida used my legs to help drag herself up. Then so did the others. I wriggled up to the top and peeped over. The whole far side of the dune was in shadow. Not a wavy, blurry shadow but a deep, cool pool of shadow, like you could drink from it. And there, fluttering away in the middle of it, was a bright white flag.

And we could all see that if we’d tried to walk around the dune, we’d have spent hours in the heat and maybe never have found the flag at all. Now we’d be there in a few seconds.

“Okay,” said Max. “Let’s do it.”

We all held hands, took a breath and jumped. Bombs of sand exploded around us as we went faster and faster. I went
completely over in an involuntary somersault and ended up sliding down the last bit headfirst on my back. I landed more or less at Max’s feet. He was holding up the flag and everyone was cheering.