Einstein's Underpants--And How They Saved the World (11 page)

‘I don't know, something else with numbers, like Einstein.'

None of the FREAKs, apart from Alexander, was any good at maths.

‘What's the square root of a hundred and forty-four?'

Tortoise Boy didn't pick that by chance. It was the hardest sum to which he knew the answer.

‘Twelve.'

Alexander knew it shouldn't have impressed anyone, but it did.

Tortoise Boy couldn't ask any more difficult sums because he didn't have a calculator. But Felicity did, in her bag.

‘Fine, then, if we're doing square roots, what's the square root of, um . . . two hundred and eighty-nine?'

Now this was another piece of good fortune for Alexander. Felicity had hit on a
very lucky number: 289 just happened to be one of the numbers with a square root that was itself a whole number. And Alexander knew his times tables right up to 20 x 20. It took him only a second to retrieve the information.

‘Seventeen.'

Felicity looked sharply at him, then tapped away at the calculator. ‘Right!' she said, amazed.

‘Still,' said The Hurricane, ‘it's not exactly rocket science, is it? I mean, you know, any question where the answer's seventeen can't be
that
difficult, can it?'

There was a murmur of agreement. It was hard to deny that there was more to rocket science than knowing the square root of 289.

‘Ask something else then.'

Alexander was on a high. He'd answered three pretty tricky questions correctly. He felt as though he could answer anything.

The Hurricane snatched the calculator
out of Felicity's unresisting hands.

‘OK, what's the square root of . . . let me see . . . twenty-one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four point four one?'

It was what Alexander had been dreading. His happy buzz left him, and he scratched his head through the thin material of the underpants. The whole thing was insane, he realized. He had no more absorbed Einstein's genius than he'd absorbed Einstein's breakfast.

Some of this must have shown on his face. The rest of the FREAKs began to lose the look of borderline awe they'd assumed after his earlier feats of genius. The first mocking smiles began to appear. Alexander squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture the answer. It was no good. He gave up. He said the first number that came into his head as a way of bringing the whole show trial to an end.

‘One hundred and forty-seven point . . . oh, what does it matter? Point nine.'

A half-smile of triumph still on his face, The Hurricane checked on the calculator. He glanced at the answer, and began raising one of his cheeks to deliver his verdict. Then he looked back at the grey screen, and his jaw fell open. If it hadn't been attached with skin it would have dropped right onto the garage floor and scuttled off under the old sofa.

‘I don't believe it,' he said floppily, because his jaw wasn't quite back to normal. ‘He's actually right.' Then he showed the answer to the other amazed FREAKs, holding the calculator to each in turn.

After that it went a bit mental. They all started shouting out numbers to him, and Alexander just shouted numbers right back. After the first two triumphs nobody even bothered to check any more, and the calculator was casually thrown aside (although Felicity collected it later – she wasn't the kind of girl to go around losing things). They just cheered each time he answered.

‘Nineteen thousand four hundred and eighty.'

‘Hurray!'

‘Sixty-four point one seven.'

‘Hurray.'

‘Six hundred and two point one nine eight seven.'

‘Hurray!'

And suddenly they were all over Alexander, still cheering him, but also clapping him on the back and ruffling his hair. They were a team. They were unstoppable.

They were the FREAKs.

They agreed to meet up the next evening to decide exactly how they should thwart the invasion plans of the deadliest enemies planet Earth had ever encountered.

They might have been less relaxed about the whole thing if they had realized how little time they had left.

CHAPTER 26

THEY'RE WATCHING YOU

MOST OF THE
gang decided to walk home using the short cut through the overgrown graveyard that backed onto Melvyn's garden. There was a gap in the fence you could slip through, if you didn't mind getting twigs in your hair.

‘I think I'll go the long way round,' said Felicity. She didn't much like the graveyard, which was actually quite spooky, especially at night.

‘I'll walk you home,' volunteered Alexander. He didn't much like the graveyard either, which his imagination filled with ghosts and ghouls, to go with the stinging nettles and fox poo that were the real hazards of the place.

‘But it's a bit out of your way . . .'

‘Not really,' said Alexander, even though it was.

Felicity looked at him but didn't say anything, and they waved to the others and set off together towards Felicity's house.

Alexander wasn't quite sure why he'd offered to walk Felicity home. There was definitely part of him that thought it was the right thing to do, probably because she was a girl, and girls needed protecting, didn't they? But then he probably wouldn't have asked Really Annoying Girl. Although of course Really Annoying Girl didn't need his or anyone else's protection. In fact the world needed to be protected from
her
. No, it wasn't so much a protecting thing, even with Felicity, who probably
did
need a bit of protecting, but more a just-wanting-to-be-with thing.

Alexander had never had those sorts of feelings about girls before, and he wasn't quite sure what to do with them. He
certainly didn't know what to talk about with girls, apart from The Mission. And this didn't seem to be the right time to talk about The Mission.

No, this situation called for something different. Some kind of light-hearted banter. A joke. Not a rude joke. Something clever. He tried to think of one. What do you call a . . . ? No, what do you get if you cross a . . . a
what
with a
what
? He couldn't remember.

Then he noticed something. Something big and round and silvery. In the sky. He was so befuddled that for a second or two he couldn't remember the name of the big round silvery thing in the sky. The loon . . . the moom . . .

‘Moon!' he yelled, making Felicity jump.

‘What?'

‘Look. There's a big moon. In the sky. Isn't it, er, nice?'

‘Yes, very.'

Felicity didn't seem very interested in the
moon. In fact she appeared rather distracted. It was probably the excitement caused by all the momentous events of the evening. She was probably awestruck by his brilliance, the way he'd answered every question . . .

He wondered if perhaps he ought to put his arm around her shoulders. In fact, suddenly that was exactly what he wanted to do. He could already imagine the pleasant sensation of her shoulders under his arm. Almost of its own volition, his arm began to rise out horizontally. It had just begun to brush Felicity's cardigan – with hardly any more weight than a butterfly alighting on a dandelion – when she let out an ear-piercing scream. It was the sort of scream you'd expect from an American college kid about to be dismembered with a power saw in a cheap zombie movie, which Alexander thought was frankly a little excessive, given that he'd barely even touched her.

‘S-sorry,' he began, but then he saw Felicity's face and he realized that it was
something a bit more shocking than his arm on her shoulder that had scared her.

‘There,' she said, pointing to a gap between two houses. ‘I saw . . . there was a . . . a shape.'

Alexander stared at the gap. There were two wheelie bins, some cardboard boxes, a mattress and a roll of carpet – i.e. typical urban rubbish.

‘It's just junk.'

‘Something moved.'

‘Probably a fox. Or rats.'

Alexander silently cursed himself for mentioning rats. Girls were notoriously afraid of rats. And so was he. Not particularly afraid, but more than he was of rolled-up carpet or wheelie bins. Although, now he thought about it, there was something a bit creepy about the junk in the space between the houses. He had the definite feeling that the bin was staring at him. It was probably just paranoia. And yet . . .

‘Let's get going,' he said.

Now, as they hurried down the dark street, it was Felicity who seemed to want to be close to him.

‘There's definitely something weird going on,' she said nervously. ‘I thought we were just having fun, but now I'm not so sure.'

‘What do you mean you thought we were just having fun?'

‘You know, the aliens and all that. It was like being in a drama group.'

‘Drama group . . . ?' Alexander found that he was annoyed.

‘I'm not saying . . . I mean, I thought . . . But now I think . . . Oh, please, can we hurry?'

And as she said it, Alexander felt a peculiar tickling sensation at the back of his neck. He spun round, almost expecting to see one of the gang there, but the street was empty and silent.

‘Let's run,' he said, forgetting about Felicity's lack of faith. They began to jog, but soon they gathered pace, sharing a
growing sense of near-panic. Felicity was fast, and Alexander had to strain to keep up with her. Every few metres he twisted to look backwards as he ran. Still there was nothing to see. No pursuers, no passers-by, not even any traffic on the roads.

Finally Felicity stopped. ‘This is my street. I'll be OK from here.'

‘Oh,' said Alexander, wondering a little if
he'd
be. And then he began to feel a bit silly, and giggled. Felicity looked at him for a moment, and then joined in.

‘That was kind of fun,' she said. ‘I mean, running like that.'

‘Yeah,' said Alexander. ‘And what exactly were we running
from
?'

‘Monsters,' she replied, and they both spluttered into laughter again. Then Felicity said, ‘I'd better go.'

‘I'll walk you to your door.'

‘No, it's best not to. My dad . . .'

‘Oh, sure, fine. I'll see you at school tomorrow.'

‘Bye.'

Alexander felt lonely as soon as Felicity skipped away down the street. Lonely and, once again, spooked. He didn't relish the long walk home, but luckily a bus trundled by and, by some miracle, the driver stopped for him, even though he wasn't at the bus stop.

Thank heavens Melvyn isn't here
, he thought to himself, imagining the bus accelerating past, spraying a plume of filthy puddle water over them as it went.

CHAPTER 27

THE BORGIA RESPONSE

ADMIRAL THLUGG WAS
going over the final invasion plans. He was surrounded by a group of his senior officers, who were careful not to get in his way. This was the part of the job Thlugg enjoyed the most. Except, of course, for eating the defeated foes of the Borgia Empire. He pointed at a map, using what was left of the cosmonaut's fingers, and vented:
Blue cheese, public lavatory, goat spit, angel cake, fish slime, smoky bacon flavour crisps, aubergine purée, Earl Grey tea
.

Or: ‘This insignificant offshore land mass here – known, I believe, as
Big Britain
. That shall be designated a barbecue area.'

He was interrupted by Lieutenant Unguent, a small, nervous officer from the
Intelligence Division.

‘As you know, O G-G-Great Leader with the aroma of r-r-rotting Quagg c-c-carcasses—'

Thlugg gave an exasperated burp. ‘Enough of your flattery. What is it you want?'

‘Yes, O f-f—'

‘Spit it out, man!'

‘F-f-flatulent one. We have been uploading data from our spysats in orbit around Earth. Following our analysis of the preliminary data, we also sent down a reconnaissance operative to make direct observations. It seems that there may be more of a p-problem with the harvesting than we anticipated.'

‘Problem? I understood that Earth military defences were feeble. That they were limited to archaic projectile weapons and primitive thermonuclear devices with no more power than a Clumtach's fart.'

‘This is true, O Mighty and Effulgent War
Leader, but there have been reports of special – how shall I say? –
g-g-guardians
, who watch over the human race as a nipherd g-guards his nips.'

‘Ah yes, I have heard of these
guardians
. They are depicted in certain sacred Earth texts, are they not? Strange figures such as Mansuper, and the human-arachnid cross-breed, and the one who has the powers of the bat. But did not our experts in alien cultures decide that these figures were mythological?'

‘Yes, my lord, so we thought,' said the young Borgia, losing some of his natural (and sensible) fear of the admiral as he was carried away with enthusiasm for his subject. ‘But now it seems we have p-proof of their existence.'

‘Proof?'

‘Yes, Admiral. We p-picked up a series of transmissions from an Earth scientist, who appears to be guiding a group of these guardians – or superheroes, as they are
sometimes known. He has somehow obtained evidence of our plans—'

‘IMPOSSIBLE!'

‘So we thought. But this scientist really appears to have developed a scanning technology powerful enough to detect our presence.'

‘Interesting,' said Thlugg.

‘And it now appears that this scientist has brought the Earth's finest champions together and is training them so that they might mount a resistance to our invasion. They may also have developed new weapons. But even without new weapons, they possess powers which may impede our progress. For instance, there is one whose name would appear to be Boy Tortoise.'

‘Tortoise?'

‘A heavily armoured reptilian species. And if this Boy Tortoise can replicate the powers of the fearsome tortoise in the way the Man-Spider can assume the powers of
the arachnids, then . . . well, sire, I think preemptive action is called for.'