Time-Travel Bath Bomb (14 page)

“Huh?” Lisa said. “What happened to the old Doctor Proctor, then?”

Anna sighed. “He left again.”

“But he was here? You met him?”

Anna nodded. “He strolled into Innebrède this morning, wet as a pair of swimming trunks. He came over to me, because the Trann cousins had tossed me into Innebrède Creek yet again.”

“The Trann cousins?”

“These two awful boys who live down at the bottom of my street. They had knocked over my bike, dumped out my backpack and filled my pockets with nails. They’re training to be hippos like their fathers, you see.”

“I see,” Lisa sighed.

“Well, I guess his crazy appearance scared them. At least that’s what I assume. Plus, he was shouting at them in a foreign language and shaking his fist. The Trann boys ran off, but yelled to me that they were going to go get their fathers. Then the professor helped me gather my books and school things. And when he saw that I had a big magic marker, he asked if he could borrow it to write a message on the wall at the petrol station.”

“A message?”

“Yeah. He wanted to warn himself, he said. He was going to write a note telling himself not to stop there, to keep going until he got to Italy. He told me the whole story.”

“And you believed him?” Lisa asked, surprised.

“No, no,” Anna laughed. “I thought he was a nice, but very crazy, professor. Even though he showed me the bath that he claimed he could travel through time in. It was in with all the junk cars in the Hippo’s scrap-metal yard. Then I heard the bell ringing at school off in the distance and explained to him how to get to the petrol station without running into the Trann fathers. Then I ran off so I wouldn’t be late for school.”

“I see,” Lisa said. “So, why aren’t you at school now?”

“I never made it that far. When I came round the corner, the Trann fathers were there waiting for me. They shook me and asked me who he was, that crazy foreigner who’d threatened those dear, sweet boys of theirs. I was so scared, I told them everything. They made such strange faces when I told them about the young professor who was running away with Juliette Margarine by motorcycle. They said something about how that must be the guy their boss, Mr Cliché, was looking for. They asked if I knew where the foreigner was, but I pretended I didn’t know. Then they let me go and started discussing something between themselves. They agreed to warn the other hippos in the village to keep a lookout for suspicious foreigners. And decided it probably made sense to give the petrol station a heads-up since that was usually where any foreigners coming to Innebrède went. Then they jumped into their limousine and drove away.”

“What did you do?”

“I realised right away that maybe there was something to the professor’s story after all. So, I ran as fast as I could in the same direction I’d told the professor to go.
Moan dyoo
, how I ran! Luckily I found him hiding across from the petrol station. I told him what had happened. We watched from his hiding place and saw that the limousine was there already and that the Trann fathers were talking to the two hippos who work at the petrol station.”

“That explains why they were so suspicious when Proctor and Juliette stopped for petrol,” Lisa said.

Anna’s eyes welled up. “It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” Lisa said, and now she was the one patting Anna’s cheek. “There’s no way you could have known that Doctor Proctor isn’t completely insane. To tell the truth, sometimes I wonder myself. . .”

Anna dried away her tears. “The professor said that his plan had failed, that he had to come up with something else.”

“Did he say what?” Lisa asked.

“He said you only get one chance to change something in history, so now he had to go to another time and change something there.”

“Where?” Lisa asked. “Where?”

“He said he had a brilliant idea.”

“What idea?” Lisa shouted.

“Duck!” Anna said.

The wide limousine had backed up off the bridge and was now turning round right in front of them. Lisa cautiously peeked over the edge of the ditch and caught a glimpse of a pale face inside, behind the dark tinted windows. It was Juliette. Then the limo accelerated and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

“What kind of idea?” Lisa repeated, coughing.

“The professor wanted to travel back in time to see the engineer who designed this bridge in front of us. To before he made it. To get him to change the drawings.”

“Change the bridge? Why?”

“Because the limousine that the hippos use is exactly as wide as the American tanks that rolled across the bridge here to liberate France from Hitler during World War Two. You said it yourself that the limousine only just barely fitted onto the bridge, right?”

“Yeah,” Lisa said.

“Well, the professor said that if he could just get the engineer to draw the bridge a
tiny bit
narrower in 1888, then the limousine wouldn’t fit and the hippos would have to give up and stop chasing him and Juliette. And they could just chug along on their way. And live happily ever after . . .”

“Brilliant!” Lisa exclaimed. “How clever! But . . . but how did he know who the engineer was and what year he drew the plans?”

“Simple! It’s on that sign right there.” Anna pointed and the two girls got up out of the ditch and went over to the sign that the scarf had been caught on.

“Designed by engineer Gustave Eiffel in 1888,” Lisa read. “Completed in 1894. Wait! Eiffel? Isn’t he the guy who designed—”

“Yup,” Anna said. “He’s the one who designed the Eiffel Tower. And there you have it. The professor decided to go visit Gustave Eiffel in 1888. So he said goodbye, sank down into the bath and – voilà! – he was gone! I even felt around in the bath for him. And that’s when I realised that he might not be that crazy after all. So, instead of riding my bike home, I came here to see if what the professor had described to me would happen, would really happen. And it did.”

Anna suddenly looked sad again. “The professor’s poor girlfriend, though. Imagine having to marry that scoundrel Claude Cliché.”

Suddenly she punched the palm of her hand. “I can’t believe none of those cowardly judges in Paris have had the courage to throw the book at that hoodlum! It makes me so mad that everyone just does what he says.”

“Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about guys like Cliché,” Lisa said. “But now I have to go and find the doctor. I have the soap he needs.” Lisa patted her jacket pocket.

Anna followed Lisa, who had had a running start. She had jumped over the ditch and was now running through the grass back towards the ledge where the time-travelling bath was. When they got there, Lisa was relieved to see that there were still bubbles.

“Thank you for all your help, Anna,” Lisa said, jumping in. “You’ll see. What you’ve done will end up helping to save the professor after all.”

“I hope so,” Anna said. “But I hope you’re not right about the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“That there’s nothing we can do to stop guys like Claude Cliché.”

“You should try,” Lisa said. “Good luck, Anna Showli.”

“Good luck to you too, Lisa Pedersen. Say hi to the professor from me when you see him.”

“I will, I promise.” Lisa went to plug her nose with her fingers, but discovered that she was still wearing the blue nose clip.

“Hey, the professor said one other thing,” Anna said. “That I should be careful if his old assistant showed up. His assistant is apparently able to track people by reading the soap residue and can follow people no matter what time they travel to.”

“Yeah, that was my understanding too, that his assistant was kind of a shady guy,” Lisa said. “Okay, bye!”

“But . . .” Anna started.

But it was too late, because Lisa had already disappeared into the bubbles.

“. . . his assistant wasn’t a guy,” Anna continued, mumbling. “The professor told me it was a woman. A very unusual woman . . .”

Meanwhile, under the water, Lisa was concentrating on Gustave Eiffel’s office and a date in 1888. But which date? She chose the first one she thought of, May 17, Norwegian Independence Day. That’s as good as any other date, right?

FROM HIS BED in the tower suite at the Hôtel Moe Bla, Nilly was staring into the muzzle of an old-fashioned pistol. And thinking that he would much rather be staring at a plate of bacon and eggs. Not just because he was awfully hungry, but because pistol muzzles are unpleasant things to stare at. A bullet could come shooting out at any time.

“Feet on the floor, don your duds and ten hut,” the woman behind the pistol commanded.

“Wh-wh-why?” Nilly stuttered, pulling the covers up to his chin.

“Because you’re going to help me find the man who ruined my life.”

“Wh-wh-who’s that?”

Raspa’s eyes glowed with hatred as she whispered hoarsely, “Doctor Proctor, of course.”

LET’S REWIND FOR five seconds and then pick up again where we left off.

“You’re going to help me find the man who ruined my life,” Raspa snarled with a pistol aimed at the bed in which our hero, Nilly, was lying with the covers pulled up to his chin.

“Wh-wh-who’s that?” whispered Nilly, who maybe wasn’t looking quite as heroic as we might have wished.

Raspa’s eyes seethed with hatred as she whispered hoarsely, “Doctor Proctor, of course.”

Nilly swallowed and asked, “C-c-couldn’t I just tell him you said hello when I see him next?”

“GET UP!” Raspa bellowed, the pistol in her hand shaking.

“Okay, okay!” Nilly said, tossing off the covers and hopping out of bed onto the floor. “You don’t need to yell like that. What do you want with that shabby old professor, anyway?”

“Not much,” Raspa said, sinking down into an armchair as she watched Nilly get dressed. “I just want what’s mine.”

“And that is . . . ?”

“Elementary, my dear young sailor. The drawings for the time-travelling bath.”

“Yours? Didn’t Doctor Proctor discover—”

“But I was the one who invented the time soap bath bombs!” Raspa growled, white drops of spit spraying from her mouth. “And then that idiot betrayed me! Messed everything up by falling in love with this Juliette woman. Just her name makes my mouth taste like rancid butter. He ruined everything!”

“So you were . . . you were . . .”

“Yes, I was his assistant. But I was at least as smart as he was!”

“And now you want to find him so that you can steal his part of the invention.”

“Hurry up!”

Nilly discovered that he’d put his shoes on before his trousers and had to start all over again. “Why should I help you find the professor if you’re just going to steal from him?”

Raspa waved the pistol.

“Oh yeah, right,” Nilly mumbled as he pulled on his trousers. “What’s going to happen to us after you get your claws on the drawings?”

“If I were you,” Raspa said, scratching the side of her nose with the pistol, “I would try not to think about that. Concentrate instead on where the professor might be.”

“I have no idea,” Nilly said. “So sue me, but I really have no idea.”

“People can’t be bothered to sue dead dwarves,” Raspa said, waving the pistol.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do remember that it starts with ‘In’,” Nilly said hurriedly. “And that could really be so many places. India, for example. Or Indonesia. The Incan Empire. Inishshark Island in Ireland . . .”

“Stop!” Raspa snarled, raising the pistol. “You’re obviously no help, you snotty-nosed brat. So, farewell . . .”

Nilly could see her long, crooked index finger curling round the trigger and starting to pull back on it.

“Wait!” he screamed. “I just thought of it!”

Raspa squinted at him in suspicion without lowering her pistol. “Oh, did you now?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Nilly said, nodding so energetically that his fringe painted red streaks through the air.

“Well? Where?”

“We need a time-travelling bath to get there,” Nilly said. He ran over to the bathroom and pulled open the door. “Can you set up this bath?”

“No, you idiot!” Raspa railed. “Not without Proctor’s drawings. We have to go back to the bath in that blasted meadow. I landed right on my head when I arrived . . .” Raspa complained, rubbing her forehead, and only now did Nilly notice a blue lump right at her hairline.

“You came here in the same bath as me?”

“Of course,” Raspa mumbled.

“How?”

“Enough talk. Time to ship out,” Raspa said, and then opened the door and waved Nilly out into the hallway with her pistol.

Nilly gasped in disbelief. “
Before
breakfast? Are you aware that breakfast is
included
in the price at this hotel? That it’s
complimentary
?”

“NOW!”

Nilly shrugged.

“All right,” he said innocently. Precisely as innocently as someone who’s just had a not-altogether-so-innocent idea. Because Nilly had actually just figured out that they had to get out onto the street so he could sneak off and, thanks to his small stature, disappear in the crowd.

“Come on,” he said, strutting out. Raspa followed, sticking the pistol into her coat pocket as they went down the stairs. When they came out onto the street, Nilly looked around in confusion. The clouds had rolled in overnight and now it felt like it was about to start raining. But that’s not what was confusing him.