The Great Rabbit Revenge Plan (13 page)

‘Hey!' says Peter. He likes this story. Out of sheer excitement, he presses Lackilug hard against his nose.

‘Yes,' says Dad. ‘And just as if he is waking out of a long, dreamy sleep, this Klimbambionic chief astronaut Nil Ambstronk also remembers that four hundred and thirty-seven Klimbambionic years ago, the spaceship Klimbine 9, on a routine monitoring operation, came hurtling through the universe onto, of all places, Planet Earth, and drilled its way down into the jungle floor.'

Lackilug the mouse does a very good imitation of the sound of the impact.

‘Very good,' says Dad. ‘May I continue?'

He may.

‘Right. So, Nil Ambstronk and his co-pilot Eddi Aldi survived the landing, but Klimbine 9 was beyond repair, because some important materials didn't exist on Earth. And besides, they had lost contact, so they couldn't call for help. For this reason, the two astronauts, heavy of heart, had decided to have themselves transformed by their transmutator into the double forest snake Anabasis and to stand guard over the spaceship in this form, to make sure that it did not fall into the wrong hands. So now what do you say?'

The great red kite of Dad's satisfaction rustles softly, but proudly, in the breeze.

‘Hmm,' says Peter. He's never said that before in his whole life.

Dad is a little perplexed.

‘It's a damned good story,' he says. ‘Or isn't it?'

‘Oh, yes, sure,' says Konrad quickly. There must on no account be a bad atmosphere.

And the best way to prevent such a thing would be to ask a few particularly clever questions.

So he says ‘Ah,' in a questioning kind of way, though he hasn't a notion what to ask. But then he thinks of something. ‘How come the forest snake didn't know before now who he is and where he comes from?'

‘Ah,' says Dad now, also in a questioning tone.

Oh dear, thinks Konrad, hoping this question wasn't too clever. That'd be stupid!

But he's in luck.

‘This is the way it was,' says Dad. ‘Nil Ambstronk and Eddi Aldo –'

‘Aldi,' says Peter out from under Lackilug the mouse.

‘Pardon, Aldi – they had programmed the transmutator in such a way that they would not only be transformed into forest snakes, but they would forget everything – except their mission to guard the crystal. And the reason for this was so that they wouldn't try, out of sheer homesickness for their home planet Klimbambion – '

‘Klimbambium,' says Lackilug the mouse in Peter's voice.

‘Sorry, I mean, so that they wouldn't get desperately unhappy
or go mad, out of homesickness for their home planet Klimbambium. Better to be two fairly limited forest snakes, they thought, than two homeless, unhappy and bored astronauts. Obvious enough, right?'

Sure thing.

‘And why is nobody allowed near the spaceship?' asks Konrad.

‘Aha!' cries Dad. ‘The question of questions! For the very simple and pressing reason that the profoundly advanced technology of the Klimbambions must on no account fall into the hands of the essentially irrational and belligerent Earthlings. It's unbelievable the kind of tomfoolery such people might get up to with it.'

Dad is glowing with pleasure at how well he has winkled this surprising development into the forest snake story. He's glowing so hard that Konrad is going to have to shift a bit aside so as not to get burnt by him. This would be a good moment, he thinks, to raise the subject of the business with the rabbit. But how, exactly, should he do it? How is he going to effect a transition from the irrationality of humanity in general to the single, totally absurd project of one mad red-haired girl?

But then it becomes suddenly clear that there is no point in thinking about it any more, because, although it is not yet quite a quarter past eight, Dad has obviously decided to finish the current instalment of the story with this sparkling Klimbambium business.

Still in the best of moods, he sits up with a single movement, thumps and tickles Peter and Konrad a little, wishes
them both a good night and goes out onto the landing.

‘Lights out in five minutes!' he cries, and then his steps are to be heard on the stairs.

And Konrad still hasn't asked.

Bigomil A. Deceiver

Peter and Konrad do put the lights out after five minutes. Their two mice, however, are still pretty lively and they chat away in the dark from one room to the other.

At first it's all about the latest instalment of the forest snake story. Peter's mouse, Lackilug, did not, apparently, quite understand what had happened. Maybe he is just pretending to be more stupid than he actually is. All the same, Mattchoo tells him the whole transformation story again.

‘And besides,' says Matchoo in his squeaky voice – it sounds like ‘beshaids' – ‘besides, you probably can't really expect to be able to understand absolutely everything in the story. But we do at least know that these forest snake astronauts come from the planet Klimbambium, where everything is much more modern, and therefore also much more complicated, than things are on Earth.' And while he is at it, Mattchoo the mouse explains to Lackilug the mouse a few other complicated and uncommonly advanced gadgets that they have on the planet Klimbambium.

For example, the totally automatic car wash, except not for cars but for people, where even your toenails get cut automatically and it doesn't hurt a bit; the remote-controlled schoolbooks that you only need to put under your pillow at night and in the morning you know everything that's in
them; the eating machines with flavour-changers that cook roast pork with red cabbage and dumplings that tastes like fresh fruit jelly with vanilla sauce; and a few other things that make life easier.

Lackilug eventually falls asleep, listening to these descriptions, and Konrad can hear Peter snoring gently. Shortly afterwards, Mattchoo the mouse also falls asleep. Only one person is still awake: Konrad Bantelmann. And he can't even think about sleep. Because if he can't work up the courage to ask his dad to render a particular service, then he may as well stay in bed tomorrow morning and pull the covers over his head. And the next day too. In fact, he can't ever put in an appearance again anywhere in the whole Dransfeld, and especially not anywhere near number 28b. And because that's the way it is – or rather, because that's the way it can't be allowed to be – the same Konrad Bantelmann climbs quietly out of his bed at twenty-five to nine. Very quietly, so as not to wake Mattchoo, Lackilug or Peter, he leaves the room. Just as quietly, holding his breath, he goes down the stairs until, very quietly, he reaches the closed living-room door.

He can feel his heart beating. He can even hear it beating. And before his parents on the other side of the living-room door also hear it beating, he knocks on the door.

‘Yes?' says someone from inside.

In Konrad goes, and now here he is in the living room, where Dad is lying on the sofa, and Mum is sitting in the armchair, each with a book on their lap, and both of them looking at him as if he were the Principal Boy in a
pantomime or as if he'd appeared at Easter in a diving suit and wished them a Happy Christmas.

‘Hello,' says Konrad.

‘Hello,' say his parents. They wonder if there is something so urgent that it can't wait until morning.

‘Well, yes there is,' says Konrad. ‘I can't sleep.' At least that much is not a word of a lie.

‘Why not?'

‘Because … because …' Hell! He'll have to say it. He must. Even if it costs him his head. He must!

‘Because I don't know what happens next in the story.'

Well done! Konrad Bantelmann – the world's greatest living coward. The next thing, they'll put him in a freak show, so that people can take a good look at him, a euro a go.

‘Well!' says Dad.

‘No!' says Konrad quickly. He's thinking so hard that any minute now steam is going to come spurting out of his ears.

‘That's not it. I've been thinking how the story might go on. But I don't quite know if I've got it right. And that's why I can't sleep.'

‘Hmm,' says Dad. ‘Maybe you could tell us, and then we could see if it's right or not.'

‘Well,' says Konrad. A great way to start a story!

What was it that Dad had said recently? Most people have to be kicked before they can think anything up. Konrad finally understands what he meant.

‘Da-ad,' he says. ‘Remember Dr Deceiver?'

‘Of course,' says Dad. ‘Bigomil A. Deceiver, the unimaginative, underhanded, conniving would-be explorer.'

‘Yes,' says Konrad. ‘I mean, no. I think, actually, we have been unfair to him.'

‘Really?' says Dad. ‘That sounds interesting. In what way have we been unfair to him?'

Konrad sits in the little armchair and draws his feet up under his bottom.

‘This is the way it was,' he says. ‘Deceiver wanted to cut off a bit of the crystal.'

‘Which Anabasis the – at the time still double – forest snake wanted to stop him from doing.'

‘Correct. And we thought, he wants the piece of the crystal so that he can be the one to win the Nobble Prize for the best discovery.'

‘Right,' says Dad.

‘No, that's not right!' says Konrad and his voice sounds now almost like the politicians on the television. ‘I know now that it was all totally different from what we thought.'

‘Well, you surprise me,' says Dad. ‘So, how was it then?'

‘Maybe you won't believe it,' says Konrad. ‘But in reality, Bigomil Deceiver is also an astronaut from the planet Klimbambium.'

‘Oho!' says Dad. ‘And what's his real name?'

‘Oh,' says Konrad. A good question. Which is in urgent need of an answer.

‘Darnok Retep,' he says quickly. ‘That's his name, Darnok Retep. He was turned into the scientist Bigomil Deceiver on the planet Klimbambium and he has secretly been entrusted with the task of protecting the spaceship. That's why he followed the scientists over the Obernoko.'

‘Hmm,' says Dad. ‘But –'

No buts! Konrad is on a roll now. ‘And do you know,' he says, ‘when we thought he wanted to cut a piece out of the crystal, he was really looking for the entrance, the one that Basis the half-snake found.'

That fits. Konrad is very proud of himself.

‘Well,' says Dad. ‘But it's the forest snakes who are charged with protecting the spaceship.'

‘Ye-ah,' says Konrad. There's no stopping him now. ‘But unfortunately, the astronauts, Ambstronk and Aldi, have been unable to communicate with HQ on Klimbambium to let them know what form they have taken, and so they think – they have thought for four hundred and thirty-seven Klimbambionic years – that the spaceship is totally unprotected.'

‘Sounds logical,' says Dad.

Logical? It sounds fantastic! Konrad has never before found the forest snake story as good as he finds it now.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘That's the way it is. Sometimes you think that people are only fooling around or even that they are doing something really bad, and then in the end you find out that they meant well all along.'

‘Ah,' say his parents.

Konrad is really flying now. ‘The forest snake, for example, should have just let Deceiver, I mean Darnok, get on with it, because he had this whole plan to get the valuable spaceship back to the planet Klimbambium.'

‘Well, my goodness,' says Dad. ‘That was stupid.'

‘Wasn't it just! If the forest snake had kept its nose out
of things, then all the problems might have been solved.' Konrad says this in a very reproachful tone of voice. ‘Because you see, Deceiver is a very reliable man, the best spaceship-retrieval expert they've got. He's done it on several planets before. And of course he has everything that is needed to repair the spaceship.'

‘Well then,' says Dad. His eyes are squeezed up and his forehead is all rumpled. ‘That's pretty bad. Because as far as I am aware, Ana the forest snake is now slithering into the tent of Bigomil Deceiver – pardon me, of …'

‘Darnok Retep.'

‘Thank you. Because he is the very person that she wants to put into a deep sleep with her paralysing bite. So now what?'

‘Oh, good heavens,' says Konrad. That would put the two spaceship rescue teams out of business for good.

‘Exactly,' says Dad with a grin.

‘But that doesn't happen.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because,' says Konrad, ‘because one of the forest snakes – because, at the very moment that it is about to sink in its fangs, at that very moment … it … it has a thing.'

‘A thing?' says Dad.

‘Yeah, like the other one had when it got into the spaceship.'

‘A sudden realisation? Does Ana the half-snake suddenly realise that she is, in fact, the astronaut Eddi Aldi?'

‘No,' says Konrad. He's using the tone of voice that Dad uses when he explains stuff to Peter, stuff that he really ought
to know already. ‘No, that could only have happened if it had touched the crystal. But it suddenly has one of those – those – what d'you call it?'

‘A funny feeling?'

‘Yes, only not funny.'

‘A feeling of security?'

‘Something like that.'

‘A feeling of confidence?'

‘What's that?'

‘Well,' says Dad, ‘if I trust somebody completely, even though I don't know what he's doing. Just like that. Maybe because I love him. That's having total confidence in the person.'

‘Exactly,' says Konrad, exhaling loudly. ‘That's exactly what Ana the forest snake has, although she hasn't the faintest idea that she is really Aldi the astronaut.'

‘Terrific,' says Dad. ‘I'm speechless. So what does she do now?'

‘The first thing is that she doesn't bite Deceiver but instead she creeps back to her hide-out in the jungle.'

‘Whew! A piece of luck for all concerned.'

‘Yes,' says Konrad. And then there's a fairly long pause, during which nobody speaks.

‘Well then,' says Dad at last, ‘I think the story could certainly go like that. And by the way, was there anything else?'

‘Oh, yes,' says Konrad.

It's now or never!

‘Could you please drive me, Friederike and a box with a rabbit in it into town tomorrow morning?'

Well, it's out. Whatever happens now, Konrad is already feeling much better.

‘Hmm,' says Dad. ‘How big is the box?'

‘One of those removal packing cases. You know.'

‘I do indeed,' says Dad. ‘No problem getting a thing like that into the car. Where are you going?'

‘You can let us out at Gerhard's toy shop.'

‘Right,' says Dad. ‘That's on my way.'

So now what? Is the question of questions not going to be asked?

‘And what's it all about?' says Dad. ‘Why does this rabbit have to be driven into town? So that it gets to see a bit of the big wide world? Or is it its birthday and it's going to be allowed to choose a toy for itself?'

This is the moment to be really strong.

‘Dad,' says Konrad, standing up straight and holding his head up. ‘Dad, if you had total confidence in me, then you wouldn't ask, you'd just drive us.'

It's very quiet in the living room for a few seconds.

Until Dad says: ‘Why should I have such confidence?'

Konrad just shrugs his shoulders. It must look good, the way he's standing there. Pretty cool. Although he's actually shaking from top to toe.

‘Oh, I understand,' says Dad. ‘Would nine o'clock suit you?'

‘That would suit us just fine.'

‘So that's settled,' says Dad. ‘Get back into bed now quickly, so you get some sleep before your mysterious adventure.'

He doesn't have to tell Konrad twice. Mum gets a quick kiss, and Dad a very quick one, and then Konrad runs up the stairs, jumps into bed, wakes up Mattchoo the mouse and tells him what has to be told. Then he falls asleep so quickly that you'd think someone had turned him off like a light.