Time-Travel Bath Bomb (12 page)

Nilly was going to laugh, but instead he stiffened. He dug around desperately in his wet pockets, but found only small things that started with
P
: a parking ticket, a plum stone and a sealed plastic bag of fartonaut powder. But not what he was looking for. Of course not, because Lisa was the one who had brought the jar of soap. All he had was an empty time-travelling bath! How was he ever going to get back?

Nilly stuck his index finger into his ear, rotated it round and pulled it out again.
Plop!
But even that didn’t help. His brain didn’t give him any answers. He was doomed. So, Nilly wasn’t laughing, not one bit.

But there were some other people who were.

Nilly turned to see where the laughter was coming from. And saw a short, thin man who was lying on his back in the grass with a blade of grass in the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a blue bicycling jersey with a number on it.

“Great sprint.” The man laughed. “You ought to take up biking, kid.”

“Thanks,” Nilly said. And since he was a born optimist who also liked company and a good conversation, his outlook on the situation had already started to improve a bit.

“Do you know why bulls like that get so mad?” Nilly asked. “Did I do something to that sack of beef, or what?”

The guy said, “Red hair,” and pointed at Nilly’s head. “Bulls see red when they see red.”

Nilly cocked his red-haired head to the side and looked at the man. “Um, how come you’re speaking Norwegian?”

The man laughed again. “I’m speaking French, my friend. And so are you.”

“I am?”

“You’re certainly a very funny clown. What’s your name?”

“Nilly. And I’m not a clown.”

“You’re not?” the man said. “You’ll really have to excuse me, Nilly. I thought that was a clown nose.”

Nilly reached up to feel his nose. He’d totally forgotten about the nose clip. Something was slowly starting to dawn on him. He pulled off the nose clip and tried: “And what’s your name, man in the blue bicycling jersey?”

The man looked at him blankly.
“Keska too ah dee?”

“Aha!” Nilly shouted triumphantly. It wasn’t just dawning on him, it was broad daylight inside his head. He understood everything. Well, almost everything. At any rate, he understood why he had understood what the cancan dancer had said, and what Juliette had meant when she’d said a lot would become clear to them if they kept the nose clips on. That was because these really were French nose clips. While you wore them you could understand French and you could speak French. What do you know, another ingenious Doctor Proctor invention!

Nilly was so excited that, as usual, he forgot all about his problems. He put his nose clip on and asked the man what his name was and why in the world he was lying here in the grass when all the other bicyclists he’d seen were riding as if their lives depended on it.

“My name’s Eddy. And my bike has its third flat tyre of the day.” He pointed over by the road where a racing bike was lying on its side. “I just couldn’t take anymore. The finishing line is at the top of that mountain over there.”

Eddy pointed again and Nilly had to bend his neck back to see the peak of the snow-capped mountain in front of them.

“What about you, Nilly?”

“I came from the future,” Nilly said. “I think I came to the right time, but the wrong place. What year is it and what’s the name of this place?”

Eddy laughed even louder. “Thank you, Nilly. At least you’re cheering me up!”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Well,” Eddy said. “The year is 1969 and we’re in Inndarnit. Where were you supposed to be?”

“Inndarnit?” Nilly mumbled, scratching his left side-burn. “I was supposed to be somewhere that started with ‘Inn’ but I forgot the rest. Lisa must be there now, you know?”

“Lisa?”

“Yeah, we’re supposed to find Doctor Proctor. Maybe she’s already found him, and now they’re just waiting for me to show up. It’s actually totally crucial that I find them. Without them I’m going to be stuck here in 1969.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Eddy said. He took a little drink from his water bottle and passed it to Nilly. “1969 really sucks.”

“Oh?” Nilly asked.

“Nothing but flat tyres in every single race,” Eddy said. “Just as bad as 1815 was for Napoléon.”

“1815? Napoléon?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Nilly thought about it. “I don’t think I was born then.”

“From history class, silly! June eighteenth, 1815. That was when Napoléon led his troops . . .”

“. . . across the Alps?” Nilly tried.

“No,” Eddy said, waving away a bumblebee. “That was when he took a licking in the Battle of Waterloo. And I know that quite well, because Waterloo is just a few minutes of Eddy-biking from my dad’s bike shop in Belgium. Totally flat country. You know what? Now that I’m giving up biking, I think I’ll go home and see if I can get a job there.”

“Good thinking,” Nilly said, taking a drink from the water bottle. “Because, really, what’s the point of biking up and down all these mountains? They’re way too big.”

“The point?” Eddy was staring at Nilly as if Nilly had reminded him of something he’d forgotten.

“Yeah,” Nilly said, gulping down more water. All this time travel had made him unusually thirsty.

“This is the Tour de France,” Eddy said. “Whoever wins this mountain stage wins money, gets kissed on the cheek by cute girls and will be interviewed on TV while everyone in France watches.”

Nilly thought about that, and began to see that perhaps there was some point to it after all. Especially the part about being kissed by cute girls. And being seen on TV by everyone in France couldn’t really hurt either . . .

“Hey!” Nilly cried. “Did you just say
everyone in France
?”

“Absolutely everyone,” Eddy said. “Every TV in France is on for the Tour de France. You can’t not see it.”

“Even if you don’t have a TV at home?”

“They set up TVs in every single café, restaurant and country shop.
Merde!
You’ve got to stop making me talk about this stuff, Nilly! Now I just want to fling myself back on my bike and win this darned race!”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do!” Nilly shouted. Then he ran over to Eddy and pulled him up onto his feet.

“What?” Eddy asked.

“First I’m going to help you fix your tyre and then we’re going to fart our way up to the top of this mountain and be interviewed on TV.”

“We?” Eddy asked as Nilly pushed him towards his bike.

“Yup. Because I’m going to sit in on the interview. And I’ll say that Lisa and Doctor Proctor have to come and pick me up, so we can return to our own time.”

“You sure say a lot of funny-sounding things,” Eddy mumbled and took out his puncture kit. “But at least you’ve given me back my desire to win.”

TWO MINUTES LATER, two cud-chewing sheep raised their heads as a bike passed them on the road just outside their fence.

“Did you see that?” the one cud-chewing sheep said to the other. “Two people on one bike. Isn’t that cheating?”

The other sheep blinked his eyes sleepily. “Baaa, why? It makes the bike even heavier when you’re going uphill. Besides, they’re dead last.”

“That’s not the point,” the one sheep said. “Is it
allowed
?”

The other chewed his cud for a bit while he contemplated this.

“No idea,” he finally said. “I’m a sheep, you know? We don’t know that kind of thing.”

EDDY STOOD ON his pedals and pushed as hard as he could. Not just because standing on the pedals helped him go faster, but because his seat was occupied by a red-haired little guy with a nose clip who was screaming into his ear:

“Come on, Eddy! Faster, Eddy! You’re the best, Eddy!”

And when Eddy tried to ease up on the pace a little:

“Pull yourself together, Eddy! Do you want a licking, Eddy? Do you want this to be your Waterloo, Eddy? Do you want to be a full-time tyre-fixer, Eddy? You can do more! It feels gooood to be tired!”

And, truth be told, it was helping. Soon they started overtaking cyclists who stared open-mouthed at the strange two-man team with the little boy screaming:

“Push, Eddy! The other cyclists are even tireder! Think about the girls waiting at the top, Eddy. They have soft lips. Soooooft lips, Eddy. Faster, faster, otherwise I’m going to give you a noogie! And we’re not talking about a little love noogie, we’re talking about a massive, Yeti noogie!”

Eddy, who wasn’t really sure what a noogie was, but didn’t particularly want to find out either, pushed. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his breath had started making a strange, rasping sound. But they were still passing cyclist after cyclist and had made it quite a way up the mountain, to where there were still patches of snow in the shadows. Even though Nilly’s clothes had dried in the sunshine, he was now so cold that his teeth chattered as he chanted his mixture of encouragement and threats. Until a wheezing Eddy interrupted him:

“I can’t do it . . .”

“What?” Nilly yelled through his chattering teeth. “Do you want a n-n-noogie, you B-B-Belgian waffle!”

“The finishing line is too close . . .” wheezed Eddy. “We won’t be able to pass everyone.”

“Nonsense,” Nilly said. “I said we would fart up this mountain and when Nilly says we’ll fart up a mountain, you’d darn well better—”

“Fart all you want . . .” Eddy groaned. His tongue was hanging down to the handlebars and the bike had started wobbling ominously. “Look at how steep this is.”

Nilly looked. The road was so steep that it looked like a wall. And way, way up ahead, high, high above them he saw the yellow jersey of the guy in front.

“Hm,” Nilly said.

“Hm what?” Eddy wheezed.

“I’m going to fart.” Nilly stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out a plastic bag, which he resolutely opened and then poured the contents into his mouth.

“What was that?” Eddy asked.

“That was a little carry-on item starting with
P
,” Nilly said, and burped. “Hold on tight. Six – five – four – three – two . . .”

“Hold on . . . ?”

Eddy didn’t have a chance to say anything else. There was a bang so loud that it felt like the earwax was being pushed into his ears and his eyes bulged out of his head. And then there was a roar, like from a speeding rocket engine. The reason he thought of a rocket engine specifically was that they were rushing up the mountain sort of like – well, actually, exactly like – a rocket!

“Yippee!” Nilly cheered in his ear.

“Yippee!” Eddy cheered as they passed the cyclists ahead of them and had only the one in the yellow jersey left to overtake. But there was the finishing line! And the guy in the yellow jersey had only a few metres to go.

“Give it all you got, Nilly!” Eddy yelled, steering the bike as best he could so they wouldn’t run right off the side of the mountain. “Full fart steam ahead! Otherwise it’s noogie-time for you!”

“I’m trying,” groaned Nilly, who was very red in the face.

“Faster, Nilly, we’re not going to make it! Think about those soooooft lips!”

And Nilly thought. He thought that if they didn’t manage this, he would probably never get to see Lisa or Doctor Proctor again. This thought made his intestines give one final effort and he pressed out a little more wind so they shot ahead with a little more speed. The spectators watching would talk about it for years afterwards – that they had been witness to the fantastic sprint in the Provence mountains at the 1969 Tour de France, when the legendary Eddy and his strange red-haired passenger, whose name no one could remember, had flown towards the finishing line as if they had a jet engine on their bike. Some even claimed that the bicycle had lifted off from the ground. Yes, a few even imagined that a strange white smoke had trailed from the seat of the trousers of the little boy on the bike seat. Even so, it had appeared hopeless, up until the final metres when they had managed to increase their speed a tiny bit more and at the finishing line they had beaten the yellow jersey by a gumillionth of a millimetre. It was the first victory for Eddy, who would go on to became the world-famous Eddy who would win bike races around the world, but who in his memoirs would say that it had been that win in Provence that had made him believe in himself and stick with cycling.