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'You okay?' asked Landen when I had returned to the stands to see him.
'I'm okay,' I puffed. 'I'm out of shape, though.'
Friday gave me a hug.
'Thursday?' hissed Landen in a hushed voice. 'I've been thinking. Where did
that piano actually come from?'
'What piano?'
'The one that fell on Cindy.'
'Well, I suppose, it just, well.
fell
, didn't it? What are you saying?'
'That it was a murder attempt.'
'Someone tried to assassinate the assassin with a piano
?'
'No. It hit her accidentally. I think it was intended for you!'
'W ho'd want to kill me with a piano?'
r
'I don't know. Have there been any other unorthodox attempts on your life
recently?'
'No.'
'I think you're still in danger, sweetheart. Please be careful.'
I kissed him again and stroked his face with a muddy hand.
'Sorry!' I muttered, trying to rub it off and making it worse. 'But I've got
too much to think about at the moment.'
I ran off and joined Jambe for a last-third pep talk.
'Right,' he said, handing out the Chelsea buns, 'we're going to lose this
match but we're going to go out in glory. I don't want it to be said that the
Mallets didn't fight until the last man standing. Right, Biffo?'
'Trilby.'
We all knocked our fists together and made the 'harrump' noise again, the team
reinvigorated - except for me. It was true that no one could say we hadn't
tried, but for all Jambe's well-meaning rhetoric, in three weeks' time the
earth would be smouldering radioactive cinder, and no amount of tarnished
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glory would help Swindon or anyone else. But I helped myself to a Chelsea bun
and a cup of tea anyway.
'I say,' said Twizzit, who had suddenly appeared in the company of Stig.
'Have a bun!' said Aubrey. 'We're going out in style!'
But Twizzit wasn't smiling.
'We've been looking at Mr Stig's genome
'His what?'
'His genome
. The complete genetic plan of him and the other Neanderthals.'
'And?'
Twizzit rummaged through some papers.
'They were all built between 1939 and 1948 in the Goliath bioengineering labs.
The thing is, the prototype Neanderthal could not speak in words that we could
understand so they were built using a human voice box.' Twizzit gave a
curious half-smile, as though he had produced a spare ace from his sleeve, and
announced with great drama: 'The Neanderthals are 1.03 per cent human.'
'But that doesn't make them human,' I observed. 'How does it help us?'
'I agree they're not human,' conceded Twizzit, still with the ghost of a
smile, 'but the rules specifically exclude anyone "non-human". Since they have
some human in them, they technically can't fall into this category.'
There was another long pause. I looked at Stig, who stared back and raised his
eyebrows.
'I think we should lodge an appeal,' muttered Jambe, leaving his Chelsea bun
half eaten in his haste. 'Stig, have your men limber up!'
The judges agreed with us. The 1.03 per cent was enough to prove they weren't
non-human and thus could not be excluded from play. While Wapcaplitt ran off
to search the croquet statutes for a reason to appeal, the Neanderthals,
Grunk, Warg, Dorf, Zim and Stig, limbered up as the Whackers looked on
nervously. Neanderthals had often been approached to play as they could run
all day without tiring, but no one until now had ever managed it.
'Okay, listen up,' said Jambe, gathering us around, 'we're back in the game at
full strength. Thursday, I
want you to stay on the benches to get your breath back. We're going to fool
them with a Puchonski switch. Biffo is going to take the red ball from the
forty-yard line over the rhododendron bushes, past the
Italian sunken garden and into a close position to hoop five. Snake, you'll
take it from there and croquet their yellow Stig will defend you. Mr Warg, I
want you to mark their number five. He's dangerous, so you're going to have to
use any tricks you can. Smudger, you're going to foul the Duchess when the
vicar gives you the red card, I'm calling in Thursday. Yes?'
I didn't reply; for some reason I was having a sudden heavy bout of deja vu.
'Thursday?' repeated Aubrey. 'Are you okay? You look like you're in a dream
world!'
'I'm fine,' I said slowly, I'll wait for your command.'
'Good.'
We all did the 'harrump' thing and they went to their places whilst I sat on
the bench and looked once again at the Scoreboard. We were losing twenty-one
hoops to twelve.
The klaxon went off and the game started with renewed aggression. Biffo
whacked the yellow ball in the
direction of the up-end hoop and hit the Whackers' ball. Warg took the roquet.
With an expert swing the opponent's ball tumbled into the Italian sunken
garden, and ours sailed as straight as a die over the rhododendrons; a distant
clack was mirrored by a roar from the crowd, and I knew the ball had been
intercepted by Grunk and taken through the hoop. Aubrey nodded at Smudger, who
took out the
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Duchess in grand style: they both careered into the tea party and knocked over
the table. The klaxon sounded for a time-out while the Duchess was pulled
clear of the tea things. She was conscious but had a broken ankle. Smudger was
given the red card but no hoop penalty as the Duchess had been shown the
yellow card earlier for concussing Biffo. I joined the fray as play started up
again but the Whackers' early confidence was soon evaporating under a
withering attack from the Neanderthals, who could anticipate their every move
simply by reading their body language. Warg passed to Grunk, who gave the ball
such an almighty whack that it passed clear through the rhododendrons with a
tearing of foliage and was converted by Zim on the other side towards an
undefended hoop.
Three minutes from time we had almost caught up: twenty-five hoops to the
Whackers' twenty-nine.
Firmly rattled, the Whackers missed a roquet, and with only a minute to run
scored their thirtieth hoop with us only two behind. All they had to do to win
was 'peg out' by hitting the centre post. While they were trying to do this,
and we tried our best to stop them, Mr Grunk, with eight seconds to go and two
hoops to make, whacked a clear double-hooper that went through one up-end
hoop, the entire forty yards down the green and through the mid. I'd never
heard a crowd yell more.
We had levelled the score and desperately tried to get our ball to the peg in
the scrum of players trying to stop the Whackers from doing the same. Warg
grunted to Grunk, who ran towards the scrum and tore into them, taking six
players down as Warg whacked the ball towards the now unprotected peg. It hit
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