Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster (11 page)

Casper was mid-headache when Chrys and Flanella burst through the front door, alive, un-breaded, but without Lottie or Andrea.

“They got them,” grunted Chrys.

Malcolm let out a bloop of disappointment from under Flanella’s arm.

“Just the four of us left. Hope you’ve got a plan, Casper.”

He didn’t. He had a headache.

Then Betty opened a cupboard, pulled out a second toaster, wheeled over to the table and plonked it in front of Casper.

There was an alarm clock strapped to the front of the toaster and dozens of watch faces boinging around on little springs. Casper had hardly finished his last gasp, before it was long past time for another one. “The Time Toaster! But it melted…”

Betty popped in another jelly bean. “You got work to do, Cashper.”

“Why does everyone seem to know what’s going on around here except for me?” cried Casper, exasperated.

Flanella stuck up a podgy hand. “I don’t.”

“Me neither,” snarled Chrys.

Betty had pottered away into the garden to pick up the pieces of her wheelchair, leaving the other three sitting round the kitchen table, looking at the Time Toaster.

“We can assume Betty wants us to use it,” said Casper, nodding to himself at every logical step, “and that she had a Time Toaster saved up for this very occasion.”

“Can I just say…” Flanella chipped in, “erm… what’s a Time Toaster?”

Casper explained for the third time.

“Cool…” Flanella licked her lips. “Useful for when you want toast.”

“But what do
we
need it for?” said Casper, desperate to get back to the point.

“Escape?” mused Chrys. “Maybe she knows we’ve lost, so it’s time to scram.”

“No,” Casper bit his lip. “Not Betty. She’s no coward, and at her age she’s got nothing to lose.”

“Then it’s got to be a way to help us defeat Briar and his stupid robot.” Chrys scratched her head. “Maybe we’re s’posed to send it back in time.”

“If we send it back in time, wherever we send it, it’ll cause havoc. And, anyway, I don’t remember reading about a giant robot in any history books. No, we’ve got to take that mechanical monstrosity down here and now.”

They thought for a while about that, then Flanella asked what a Time Toaster was again. Casper got her to write it down on Malcolm so she wouldn’t forget.

Casper tried a new approach: listing all the ways you could take down a giant robot. Chrys suggested napalm strikes and precision nukes, which wasn’t helpful because they hadn’t got either. Casper thought that they could build another giant robot, and the two might fall in love and stop all the fighting, but Flanella said Malcolm didn’t know how to build robots.

Finally, Flanella said, “Shame the robot’s ankles aren’t a bit thinner.”

Casper frowned. “Why does that matter?”

“We could’ve fitted a Tickle Tag on it. Made it go all tickly and fall over.”

“But those things were designed to work on humans.”

“Malcolm says the tickle is an electrical signal. Malcolm says metal is a good conductor.” She blinked. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“So what you’re saying is, if we could get a Tickle Tag round the robot’s ankle, and if Briar set the tickle signal off, it could work on the robot as it does on a person?”

Flanella tapped away at Malcolm for a few seconds. “He says yes.”

“That’d be perfect! Just like with the workers, a Tickle Tag would immobilise the robot! And we’ve even got one spare after you took mine off.”

The Tickle Tag lay limp on the table, white with metal buckles. Was it as simple as just clipping it to the robot? No. “You’re right, though. We’d have to fit it round the robot’s ankle, but it’s far too small.” Casper sighed. Another dead end.

After some more tapping, Flanella said, “Actually, best place for the Tickle Tag would be somewhere inside it. Where there’s no armour and just pure squiggly circuit bits.”

Chrys hadn’t had much practice looking impressed, but she gave it a good go. “So all we’ve got to do is get inside the robot and you can do your work?”

“That’s a problem in itself,” groaned Casper. “We can’t just slip down its throat.”

“Oh, Malcolm got some snaps,” piped up Flanella. She brought up a series of photos of tonight’s assault on her screen, slowly increasing in mayhem to the point where guards flooded out to reclaim the workers and she’d had to run. One picture particularly interested Casper, though.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a mark on the robot’s backside.

“Could you zoom in, please, Malcolm?”

Malcolm zoomed in, close enough to show a small door cut into the robot’s casing with a little wooden doorknob. Some sort of goods entrance or something. Surely it was large enough for a Casper-sized boy to crawl through?

Casper took an excited intake of breath. “We could climb in there. Set up the Tickle Tag in a batch of juicy circuits and get out before Briar and Anemonie notice a thing. All we need is a distraction, and Betty’s wheelchair did a pretty good job tonigh— Oh.” Casper’s plan came crashing about him like a house made of peanut butter.

Chrys snarled. She’d seen the problem too.

“Betty’s wheelchair is no better than trash now,” said Casper, through gritted teeth. “Aside from her, and with Lottie and Andrea, ahem, ‘employed’, there’re only three of us. How are we supposed to bring out the robot AND distract it enough to climb inside its bowels?”

“We need an army,” said Chrys.

And then Casper looked down at the Time Toaster, and he knew what to do.

They took the back way to the bus stop, leaping over three different garden walls and wading through a fishpond to avoid the exposed walk along Feete Street. The bus stop stood alone on the side of the road, the wires still hanging from the timetable as Lamp had left them. With a bit of guesswork, a screwdriver and a couple of trial runs, the Time Toaster was ready to fly once more.

“Ready?” winced Casper.

“Sorry,” said Flanella. “Erm… what’re we doing?”

“You’re about to see for yourself.” He tapped in a familiar date on the buttons and cried, “
Let’s TIME!
”

(Right. The next bit gets slightly confusing unless you know when everything happened. So I’ll add the dates and times, just to help you out. Thank me later.)

21 October 2012, long after dinnertime

Amanda Candlewacks was frankly livid when her son burst through the door.

“Casper Graham Ziggy Candlewacks, where on earth have you been?” she demanded, hands on hips. “You’re late for supper. Yesterday’s supper. I haven’t seen you since the bus shelter thing.”

Two cold bowls of baked beans sat next to each other on the kitchen table.

“Sorry, Mum. I’ve been… actually, you’d never believe me.”

Two girls stood behind Amanda’s son, both feasting their eyes on their surroundings as if this house were the Palace of Versailles. Amanda felt her heart race, and then her cheeks and the tip of her nose go red. Did Casper have…
girlfriends
? Two of them? “Oh… ” squeaked Amanda. “Are these your friends?”

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” said a sharp-faced girl who looked awfully like that Anemonie Blight. Amanda couldn’t tell if the girl was being sarcastic, so she replied, “We’re due for a redecoration. I was going to get a man in.”

“NYA!” From her high chair in the corner, little Cuddles, Casper’s sister, was getting bored. And with teeth like that, boredom meant bite marks.

Both Amanda’s and Casper’s eyes settled on the baby.

“Mum, can I take her for a while?”

Amanda frowned. The last time Casper needed Cuddles, it was to bite through a padlock that Lamp Flannigan had fastened round his wrist. “How long d’you need her for?”

“I’ll bring her back before morning. You go to sleep.”

“Ooh, that does sound nice. Haven’t had a good night of sleep since three weeksmmm…” And then Amanda found her eyes drooping and her legs buckling, and Casper and his girlfriends were already halfway out of the front door with Cuddles slung under one arm.

5 June 1915, shortly after breakfast

The 1st Kobb battalion stood smartly to attention in the square, their bayonets fitted with those sharp pointy sausages you get for a barbecue.

Crowds waving British flags bordered the square. Everybody had turned up, from the children with short shorts and knocky knees to an aged woman in her rickety wheelchair.

General Beverage twitched his proud moustache. “What you are about to do, troops, is the proudest thing a man can do.”

“Erm… second proudest,” piped up a little blond-haired chap from behind the general.

General Beverage twisted on his heels, enraged. “HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT ME, BOY! Darn shame you aren’t a few years older.” The general took a twist of Casper’s cheek and squeezed. “Yes,” he sneered, “nearly ripe for the trenches.”

Casper shivered. “Listen, sorry and everything, but I need your army. We’ve got this giant robot destroying the village, and only Corne-on-the-Kobb’s best can save us.”

“I see…” General Beverage gritted his teeth. “This might be just the training session we need before heading to the front. Men, quick march!”

25 February 2015, an hour away from a late supper

The Great Tiramisu’s homecoming performance had long been awaited and much hyped. But now the day had come, and there was the greasy Italian magician himself, kinder and gentler than before, but with the same grand aplomb that the public loved so much.

This trick involved his beloved white tiger bouncing on a trampoline while The Great Tiramisu juggled seven flaming batons. Then
PAFF
, the tiger was slung over The Great Tiramisu’s shoulder, and jumping on the trampoline was… Casper Candlewacks.

“Oh,” said Casper. “Hi.”

The greasy Italian took less than a second to recover from his shock. “Aha!” he cried. “It’sa magic!” He took a long bow as the crowd erupted.

Casper climbed off the trampoline and approached the magician. “Can I use you for a second? And your animals? We can be back five minutes ago if you really want to impress the crowd.”

The Great Tiramisu eyed Casper cheekily. Then, “Ah, I cannot-a resist. Where we go?”

And with a puff of smoke, they disappeared backstage.

13 June 1541, getting on for afternoon tea

“Lambs’ knees! Getcha lambs’ knees! One shilling per sack!”

“Rotten apples! Nice an’ brown. Practically giving these away now. Maggots’ll be a penny extra.”

The place stank. Casper had never seen, or smelt, the Corne-on-the-Kobb village square so heaving with humanity. Market traders hawked their wares to the filthy public that passed hungrily by. Urchin boys pattered around holding handfuls of rats by the tail while a wrinkly-skinned woman in a frilly bonnet poured buckets of brown muck from a high window. Goats roasted on spits, men spat on goats, and Casper trod in something slippery that gave off a musky smell like an old plimsoll full of cheese.