The Race Read online

  Title Page

  The Race

  The sixth book in the Saskia story

  by

  Ian Berry

  Publisher Information

  The Race Published in 2013 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of Ian Berry to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

  Copyright © 2013 Ian Berry

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  One

  “Saskia, we’ve blown it.”

  “Blown it, Twin? Explain.”

  We were carrying the mini back from our friend Tasha’s wedding to save us the bother of driving all the way from London. Carrying the car and flying through the air with it was easy - we were super girls. We were almost back home. It was night time, nobody would see us, nevertheless - we had blown it.

  “How long has it taken us to fly from London with the mini?” I asked.

  “A bit under half an hour.”

  “And if we’d driven it instead?”

  “About three hours - oh.”

  “Yes - oh! We’re two and a half hours early. Your dad’s going to think we left well before the end.”

  “We can be extra special quiet, can’t we? It’s not as if the floorboards creak. We needn’t put our feet on the floor anyway.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Just as long as your dad’s asleep when we get there.”

  “Don’t worry so. It’ll be all right. We can even still talk to each other if we use our super-quiet whispers.”

  As super girls, we can whisper so quietly that nobody else can hear us. We can hear each other of course, using super hearing. Useful sometimes. Saskia put the mini down carefully in the drive.

  “Don’t think there’s anything we need before tomorrow,” she whispered. “It’s locked already.”

  I changed to be holding the front door key, another useful super trick. Using this trick lets us even change what we look like, it’s how we change to look like Kyra and Katya, the SuperTwins, instead of Saskia and Saskia.

  “Dad’s asleep,” whispered Saskia. “I looked. Only a glance of course.”

  Her x-ray super vision had let her look into the house - through the walls and floors.

  We crept into the house, the noisiest bit was opening and closing the front door. We flew up the stairs and let ourselves into our bedroom. Hugging each other, we desperately tried not to laugh. Getting ready for bed simply involved changing to be wearing the shorts and T shirt jimjams we favoured. Grinning at each other, we got into bed and turned off the light.

  Sunday. I got up at more or less the normal time. I could hear Rob downstairs doing things involving bacon and eggs. Saskia was still apparently asleep, her hair tangled on the pillow. My hair looked like that as well. I couldn’t have that - like Saskia I hate ratty tangled hair - so I changed to have shiny brushed hair as well as wearing jeans and a jumper. Looking in the mirror, I made the odd adjustment to jumper and hair, holding my hair out of the way to check the little gold chain Saskia and I liked to wear.

  There was a chuckle from the depths of Saskia’s bed. “I love watching you when you don’t know. You act so naturally like a girl. You’d never know.”

  I knew exactly what Saskia meant. I’m not really a girl. I started my life as Richie, a man.

  “I thought you were still asleep. Not like you to make reference to my past.”

  “It’s always in the back of my mind. It must be if you think about it. Normally it doesn’t pop up - except when you do something completely girly.”

  “I think I should take that as a complement. I will anyway. How about getting out of bed so I can give you a hug and a kiss?”

  Throwing back the covers, Saskia leapt out of bed. It was about three paces from her bed to where I stood by the mirror. Between the first and second paces, she changed from her shorts and T shirt to jeans and jumper. She even arranged for her hair to be fixed as well. By the time she reached me, she was ready for the day. We flung our arms round each other.

  Saskia, I do love you,” I said.

  “And I love you too, dear Saskia.”

  “I could stand here all day hugging you but perhaps we should go and see what your dad is doing in the kitchen?”

  “I know what he’s doing - and I didn’t need any kind of super smell ability to figure it out either,” she laughed.

  “You’re right,” I laughed with her. “Bacon and eggs?”

  “Yep. And -” she sniffed delicately, “- hot chocolate. I’d say ‘race you’ but one of us might slip up and go through a wall instead of a door by mistake.”

  I held out my hand. “In that case, let’s walk together with dignity as befits our position as young girls.” Hand in hand, we walked downstairs to the kitchen.

  “Hello you two. Good day yesterday?” asked Rob, Saskia’s dad. “What time did you roll in? And if it was late, what are you doing up and about as early as this?”

  “About three, Dad. Can’t sleep with all these wonderful smells wafting upstairs.”

  “Hm. Better get some more stuff out for you two. I wasn’t expecting you quite yet.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll do it. Go and eat yours.”

  “What was the weather like last night?” asked Rob, round a mouthful of bacon and egg. “The wind’s definitely getting up this morning.”

  As if to prove him correct, a gust of the wind just mentioned rattled the kitchen windows.

  “No wind to speak of last night,” I said. Must be a sudden storm. Sounds like quite a bad one too.”

  “Let’s watch the news channel and see if it really is going to be bad one,” said Rob. “Might be local. Hurricane maybe.”

  “Don’t have hurricanes in England, Dad.”

  “You never know.”

  “Might be a tornado,” I said. “They’re more common than people think.”

  “You reckon, Twin?” whispered Saskia.

  “Dunnow. Might be. Need to keep watching, just in case.”

  “I thought we’d go for a walk, Twin. What d’you say?”

  “A capital idea. Let us proceed forthwith.”

  “You two going to be ok? The wind’s a bit strong.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. Not wearing a skirt or dress so that won’t be a problem. We’ll do our hair in pony tails. A bit of fresh air never hurt anybody.”

  “And if we get caught in a twister - well - I’ve always wanted to visit Oz and see the wizard,” I laughed.

  “Saskia! This is England not Kansas,” said Saskia. Then she thought for a moment. “Mm. Should we wear red shoes just in case?”

  “Red shoes?” asked Rob.

  “To get home, silly Dad. Wear the red shoes, click the heels together and back you come. Not read The Wizard of Oz?”

  Rob laughed. “More years ago that I care to remember. Anyway, it’s not like you to be first with the literary references, it’s usually Saskia.”

  I put my hand on her arm. “There’s no reason why Saskia shouldn’t be able to. I think the only reason I do it is because I used to find comfort in poetry and books when I was
all alone.”

  Saskia put her arms round me in a hug. “Not alone now!” She hugged harder. “Never be alone again, eh Dad?”

  “No. I agree. You need never be alone again. Hey, hey. We didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “It’s ok,” I said. “Tears of happiness. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  With breakfast scoffed and hair suitably drawn back into tails so we’d be able to see at least, we set off for our walk. It was blowing quite hard. We walked past the mini, apparently none the worse for its aerial journey last night.

  “We should carry it everywhere,” I said. “Be a wonderful low mileage car when we come to sell it.”

  “Dad might smell a rat. He’ll know we’ve been miles and miles but if the speedo only says two foot six ......”

  “Hm. Ok. Mind you, you would say that. You like driving.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  We walked along in silence for a little while.

  “Might have trouble walking now and then if we were ordinary girls,” I said.

  “Mm. Can’t blow us over.” She shouted into the air, “Blow wind, blow.”

  “Now who’s doing the quotations,” I laughed.

  “Is it? A quotation?”

  “A nursery rhyme, no less. Listen.

  ‘Blow wind, blow,

  And go, mill, go,

  That the miller

  May grind his corn;

  That the baker may take it,

  And into rolls make it

  And bring us some

  Hot in the morn.’

  Full of useless information and stuff me.”

  She took my arm. “You know I love it when you come out with things like that.”

  A particularly strong gust of wind chose that moment to try to blow us over. Didn’t succeed of course. We stayed put.

  “Getting a bit wild,” I said. “I think perhaps we should change to Kyra and Katya and get some height, have a look around.”

  “Good idea. Could be some storm damage.”

  Quickly changing to be the SuperTwins in our little costumes. we lifted into the air. At several thousand feet we were well into the cloud base, that didn’t matter, we could see through the clouds as if they weren’t there. If anything, the wind was stronger up here. Aeroplanes would have been blown all over the place but not us. We hovered in place, rotating gently to look around.

  “Saskia! Look up,” called Saskia.

  Looking up as directed, I could see what she was worried about. The clouds were spiralling around in a tight circle, like a miniature hurricane.

  “The eye is centred on the South Industrial Area, where the newspaper offices and stuff are.”

  That was the opposite end of the town from the Robinson plant but we’d been there often enough, to the newspaper building at least.

  “The spiral’s getting lower,” called Saskia. “What can we do? Anything?”

  “Even we can’t stop that sort of natural effect. All we can do is stand by and see what happens. It’ll be ok until the spiral touches the ground. Then we get ourselves a twister.”

  “Should we warn people?”

  “It’s Sunday. There won’t be many people around. We could ring the police station and warn them I suppose. They’ll not have seen this yet.”

  Saskia made the MI5 phone appear - she just changed to be holding it. It’s just about the most untraceable phone number in the world. Nobody could figure out where we were calling from. She spoke to Harold, the desk sergeant.

  “Harold? It’s Katya. Yes, that Katya. You may have a problem in the South Industrial Area. We think a whirlwind will touch down there or thereabouts. We’re in the air above the factories, watching the wind spiralling round. If it touches down, there might be some damage.”

  The noise of the wind was too great for me to listen in to the other end of the telephone. If I turned up the super hearing to listen to the phone, the wind deafened me - not literally of course.

  “He asked if we could stop it.”

  “Were you sarcastic?”

  “Heavens, no. This is too serious for that. I just said we were sorry.”

  Our wind spiral was now a vertical funnel in the air, still just clouds at the moment but really dark and sinister. The bottom of it was still sinking towards the ground.

  “We can’t stop it,” I said, “but maybe we can guide it.”

  “Guide it? How? And where to?”

  “Always questions,” I sighed.

  “I have an enquiring mind. Now, answers please.”

  “Right. Basically we blow it, use our super breath. Might work. It looks like it’ll touchdown in that factory car park. Twisters move from east to west, to do with rotating - later if you want to ask. The wind is south west. It should move more or less north-ish. That’ll take it to the river. There we’ll get a waterspout, pretty, but more importantly it’ll take energy from the twister, damp it if you like.”

  Saskia laughed, “Damp it. I like that. Mind you, soak it through is what you should have said.”

  “Whatever. We need to try and make sure it goes down Fourth Avenue and hits the river.”

  “Should we check there’s nothing loose on the Avenue? Cars and stuff?”

  “Good idea. We’ve got perhaps three or four minutes.”

  At super speed Saskia and I zipped about on what we hoped would be the track of the whirlwind. We picked up several cars and moved them to less exposed positions. We did the same for the one or two cars in the car park where the twister would touch down.

  “I saw one or two people looking out of windows, probably wondering why the hell we were nicking their cars.”

  “They’ll find out soon enough.”

  We stood on the car park waiting for the spiralling wind to touch the ground. Saskia stood with her hands on her hips, the wind blowing her hair and cape so they streamed out behind her. She looked wonderful. I had no doubt I looked the same. It was a good job we didn’t mind showing our underwear to the world - we were - the wind was seeing to that, our little skirts were everywhere except where they should be. Then - touchdown!

  Instantly the funnel of wind grew darker as it picked up dust and dirt from the ground. The noise increased as well until Saskia and I were shouting at each other.

  “Deep breath and blow,” I screamed at her.

  We did this. It worked - sort of. Super breath certainly moved the base of the twister - but not quite in the direction we expected.

  “Move round to the right a bit. The Coriolis force is pushing against us.”

  “The what?” screamed Saskia.

  “Talk later - blow now.”

  By moving around we finally managed to get the thing going where we wanted it. However, there was a further problem.

  “Saskia!” screamed Saskia. “There’s a man in that gatehouse. Bloody thing’s only a shed. The wind’s going right over it!”

  Even as she spoke, the shed was torn off its foundations. In a second it was in the air. Without a floor, left behind on the concrete base, the poor man was in danger of falling out. I took off immediately.

  The quickest way was directly through the twister. Without hesitation, I dived at the spinning wall in front of me. If I’d not been a super girl, I doubt I’d have survived. As it was, it didn’t bother me at all. It was dark in the funnel, I had to use super vision. Going directly across meant I had to cross the eye in the middle, I had a momentary glimpse of clear air upwards, all the way to the stratosphere, then I was through and out the other side.

  I collected the shed with the poor man hanging on for grim death inside it and carried it out of the worst of the wind. I set it down at the side of a road, checked the man wasn’t badly hurt, then took off to fly back to help Saskia
who’d been trying to guide the beast all alone.

  “Is he ok?” she shouted.

  “Yep, he’s fine.”

  It seemed the twister had got the idea of what we wanted it to do. It moved down the Avenue a little faster. A few more minutes of blowing and it approached the river. For a moment it seemed to hesitate then it moved out over the surface of the water. Now instead of dust and dirt, it was sucking up water, much heavier and much more plentiful. As we watched, our column of spinning air became a column of spinning water - a waterspout.

  “It’s stopped moving,” yelled Saskia over the noise of the wind and water. It sounded like several express trains all passing at once.

  “Good. The effort of lifting the water should drain it’s energy. It ought to dissipate.”

  The waterspout grew higher and higher. I estimated it at several hundred feet. Suddenly the twister just fell apart. The funnel touching the water rose back into the air much more quickly than it’d come down. All that was left was a vertical column of water. Gravity reasserted itself and umpteen tonnes of water fell back to the ground - right on top of Saskia and me!

  We weren’t particularly affected - apart from getting a bit wet - well, a lot wet actually - but we could deal with that. Once all the water was back where it belonged, on the ground, I copied Saskia as she changed to be dry. She hates wet ratty hair, and so do I.

  By now the emergency services where beginning to appear. Several police cars, fire engines and the odd ambulance. The latter we pointed at the poor man still cowering in his security shed where I’d dumped it. I though the three ambulances and paramedics who converged on him would be more than enough.

  “I think a bit of house to house - well, factory to factory actually - to check for damage and injuries don’t you?” I said to the police.

  “Oh-o.” whispered Saskia. “Trouble.”

  “What, Twin? Oh, it’s only Archie and that nice photographer.”

  “Yes but quick, can you remember? Have we - Katya and Kyra - been introduced to Archie?”

  “Mm. No. Not that I can recall. Mr. Spencer then?”

  “Yep. Look out, incoming.”