Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder (18 page)

“Freedom, sunshine, Independence Day, and my assistants,” Doctor Proctor said, laughing and hugging
them. “Could the day get any better?”

“For some,” mumbled the Commandant, who was standing a few steps behind Lisa and Nilly and rocking back and forth on his heels.

“But nobody's told me why I was set free,” the professor said after he set Nilly and Lisa down.

“Truls and Trym admitted everything,” Lisa said. “That they bullied Nilly into giving them the fartonaut powder that day.”

“And that you never sold fartonaut powder to children,” Nilly said.

“And the police are going to have Mr. Trane in custody soon,” Lisa said. “For stealing the powder and passing it off as his own. They just have to finish racing around the city first.”

“Good heavens!” the professor said. “Then all of the problems are solved!”

“Not quite all,” Lisa said, nodding toward the Commandant. “Dad?”

“Of course, of course,” rumbled the Commandant, stepping forward. He seemed embarrassed; maybe that was why he spoke a little louder and more commandingly than necessary. “Yes, well, we are so sorry for this idiotic imprisonment, Doctor Proctor. It won't happen again. Unless you do something very illegal, of course. Like stuffing bananas in exhaust pipes, for example. Or hoisting infants up to the tops of flagpoles. Or …”

“Get to the point, Dad,” Lisa said sternly.

“Of course, of course, the point,” rumbled the Commandant, his neck reddening a little. “As you can see, we have some old cannons over there. And as you can't see, we don't have any special gunpowder from Shanghai, which we need for the Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute that was supposed to be fired off from these cannons later today. It has never happened before in the modern era that the Royal Salute hasn't been fired off, and
we're afraid the whole world will laugh at us. Well, all of northern Europe, anyway … except maybe Finland … and … and …”

“Dad!”

“Of course, of course. The question is—”

“The question is,” Doctor Proctor interrupted, “whether I can help you with the Royal Salute. And the answer, my dear Commandant and neighbor, is:
Yes!
”

And with that, cheering broke out for the second time in a very short period. But Lisa and Nilly weren't able to cheer for very long, because of course they were about to go perform in the Dølgen School Marching Band in the Independence Day parade.

THE DØLGEN SCHOOL Marching Band marched and played like never before. They hit a ton of the right notes and had never been closer to playing in time. And Nikolai Amadeus Madsen led the way in his aviator glasses and grinned his biggest smile
as he dreamed of the marching band competition at Eidsvoll that summer.

And Lisa played the clarinet, and every once in a while she glanced over at Nilly, who practically had to do splits to keep up with everyone else. But he played amazingly well as his fingers danced over the keys, his eyes hurriedly scanning the music.

The band had reached Sverdrup Street, and Nilly was concentrating so hard that he didn't hear the wailing sirens on the police cars that were approaching. And he didn't see the big, roaring Hummer round the corner on squealing tires and slam on its brakes when it saw that its path was finally blocked by something it couldn't just run over or push out of the way: a whole Independence Day parade marching toward it. And the noise the school marching band was making sent shivers down the spine, because it was the sound of an explosion, a plane crash, and an avalanche at the same time.

And after the Hummer roughly a hundred police cars came around the corner with blue lights and sirens.

A man jumped out of the Hummer.

Lisa stopped playing. “But isn't that … ,” she said. “It is! It's Mr. Trane.”

Nilly stopped playing too and looked up.

Mr. Trane was standing in the middle of the street, looking around frantically. There was nowhere to hide. It seemed like this was the end of the chase.

“Ha!” Mr. Trane yelled. “You'll never get me, you idiots, you worthless turds!” And with that, he yanked up the manhole cover next to him and jumped down into the hole.

“Hey!” Lisa said.

The policemen ran over, peered down into the hole, scratched their heads, and discussed the situation. Nilly and Lisa could make out a few random snippets of the conversation:

“I'm wearing my Independence Day uniform today, and I don't want to go down in the sewer and get it all dirty.”

“Well I have asthma; the smell of excrement just isn't good for me.”

“And I'm signed up for a sack race.”

So they shoved the manhole cover back into place, checked to make sure it was on tight, canceled the whole police chase, and waved the Independence Day parade on.

ANNA CONDA WAS lying in the pipe, listening to its stomach rumble with hunger. It could hear the noise of a marching band and smell the scent of boiled hot dogs from up on the street. And now suddenly it heard a huge splash in the Oslo sewer system. The creature was so hungry that it was only just barely able to swim toward the sound. But when it got there, it saw something it recognized. Two-legged food glowing a
faint green. The last time it had eaten something like this, Anna Conda had been blasted all the way out to the Nesodden Peninsula. But that wasn't the only thing it recognized. There was something about this two-legged food, something familiar from when the creature was a little anaconda snakeling in a cage in Hovseter. Because wasn't there a certain similarity between this fat, fleshy, sausagelike man and that fat boy who used to poke sticks in his side back then? Yes, that was it! And now the anaconda could see that the man had noticed it and that the recognition was mutual. And that the man had opened his mouth to scream. That his mouth was as far open as it would go. Which was very far. But of course nowhere near as far open as Anna Conda's mouth now was.

“WOW, THAT WAS good!” Nilly yelled as he chewed. He was holding a steaming hot dog in a bun.

“Really good!” Lisa said, taking a bite of her hot dog.

They were sitting on the grassy embankment at Akershus Fortress, watching the seven brave guardsmen who were pacing nervously in front of the table where Doctor Proctor was standing with a big mason jar of Doctor Proctor's Totally Normal Fart Powder. The seven of them had signed up as volunteers for this honorable assignment.

“Assistant Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled, glancing up at the clock on the tower at City Hall, which was approaching the time of the Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute. “Can you help me dole out the portions?”

“Of course,” Nilly said, and scarfed down the rest of his hot dog, ran over to the table, grabbed the wooden ladle that was lying there, and stuck it down into the mason jar.

“I'm Nilly,” he told the guardsmen. “What do you have to say about that?”

One of the guardsmen started swaying back and forth and singing “Silly Nilly.” Two more quickly joined in.

“Shut up,” Nilly said, looking at the clock. “Or rather, open up. And bend over. Quick, we only have seconds to go.”

“Is it dangerous?” one of the guardsmen asked nervously, opening his mouth.

“Yes,” Nilly said, and stuck a whole ladleful of powder into the guardman's mouth. “But it tastes like pears. Nine … eight …”

“Thanks, assistant,” the professor said, adjusting his motorcycle goggles. “My dear guardsmen, please assume your positions.”

The guardsmen, who were not used to following commands that included words like “dear” and
“please,” looked at each other in confusion.

“I feel a little tickle in my stomach,” one of them said.

“Listen up!!” the small red-haired boy bellowed. “Point your rear ends in the same directions as the cannons, now! And bend over!”

This was a language the guardsmen understood, and they followed the orders immediately.

And right then the clock on the Town Hall tower started to toll twelve times.

IT WAS SUCH a funny sight that Lisa had to laugh out loud. Seven guards bending over forward with their rear ends aimed out over the wall of the fortress at the Oslo Fjord as the Town Hall clock chimed.

But after the third chime, neither Lisa nor any of the other inhabitants of Oslo and the surrounding area heard the clock anymore. Because both it and Lisa's laughter were drowned out by a bang so loud
that frost formed on people's eardrums and their eyes were pressed quite a ways into their heads. The next bang sent a rush of air up Rosenkrantz Street to Karl Johan Street, where it made all the flags stand out straight. The third bang shattered three windowpanes on the Nesodden Peninsula and made the grand, old apple trees in the Ullevål Garden town burst into bloom out of sheer fright. The fourth bang caused a girl Lisa knew in Sarpsborg to look up at the cloudless sky and wonder if a thunderstorm was approaching. The fifth wasn't that loud at all; it just sounded like a fart and made the people in Oslo look at each other in surprise. But the sixth nearly caused a cruise ship in the middle of the fjord on its way to Denmark to capsize and a flight of swallows on their way to Norway changed their minds and decided to fly back to Africa. The sound wave reached all the way to Trafalgar Square in London, where it bent the spray from the fountain so that all the tourists standing around it got wet and children laughed with glee.

When the final and seventh bang rang out, the king in his castle nodded in satisfaction at the farting and thought he had never heard a finer salute. And before the last echo had faded into silence, the king's adjutant was already on the phone to the Commandant of Akershus Fortress to tell him that the king would like to award him and his cannoneers the Royal Medal of Merit, a promotion to honorary cannoneer, and a long and happy life.

“Can he really give us a long life?” the Commandant asked skeptically.

“He's the king,” the adjutant said, hanging up offended.

The Commandant walked out onto the embankment again, where seven guardsmen with rips in the seats of their pants, two policemen with their eyes wet from tears of laughter, and Lisa and Nilly and the professor were still dancing around in joy.

The Last Chapter

IT HAD BEEN a loooooong Independence Day, and there was still a little of it left.

The afternoon sun shone lazily on the pear tree in Doctor Proctor's yard, and Lisa and Nilly sat underneath it, each in their own chair, clutching
their stomachs. Along with the professor, they'd polished off a five-foot-long Jell-O, and now they were so full that the professor had gone inside to rest a little.

“You did great today,” Lisa said.

“You didn't do so badly yourself,” Nilly admitted. “But it was all thanks to you.”

“You think?” Lisa smiled, closing her eyes to the rays of sunlight that filtered through the leaves.

“Yeah,” Nilly said. “You're the smartest girl I know. And even more important, you're the best …”

It got quiet and Lisa opened her eyes and was surprised to see that Nilly's face had become really red. And she thought he might have gotten something stuck in his throat because he had to clear it three times before he was able to continue in a slightly hoarse voice.

“You're the best friend anyone could have.”

“Thanks,” Lisa said, her whole body feeling warm. “So are you.”

And then neither of them knew what to say, so maybe it was just as well that there was a bang. Because there was. There was a final bang on this loooooong Independence Day, and they both turned toward Doctor Proctor's cellar. Because this didn't sound like Doctor Proctor's normal fart powder.

“Oh no,” Lisa said, dismayed.

“Not the fartonaut powder … ,” Nilly said.

“No,” said Doctor Proctor, appearing in the cellar doorway. His face was black with soot and oil. “Just a faulty muffler on a motorcycle that hasn't been started in twelve years. But that just needed a little lubrication to run, well, like it had been lubricated.”