“Sorry, guys,” I said as the Whackers lined up to take their penalty. O’Fathens took the shot and catapulted our ball into the rhododendrons. As George tried to find it, and with our other ball out of play in the Italian Sunken Garden, the Whackers went on the offensive and hooped three times before we’d even realized it. Even when we found the ball, we were too dispersed, and after another twenty-eight minutes of hard defensive footwork, managed to end the first third with only four hoops to Reading’s eight.

  “There are too many of them,” panted Snake. “Eight-four is the worst opening score for a SuperHoop final ever.”

  “We’re not beat yet,” replied Jambe, taking a drink. “Thursday, you played well.”

  “Well?” I returned, taking off my helmet and wiping the sweat from my brow. “I sank the ball with my first whack and dropped us a hoop on the offside penalty!”

  “But we still scored a hoop—and we would have already lost if you hadn’t joined us. You just need to relax more. You’re playing as though the world depended on it.”

  The team didn’t know it, but I was.

  “Just calm down a bit, take a second before you whack, and you’ll be fine. Biffo—good work, and nice hoop, Penelope, but if you chase their wingman again, you might be booked.”

  “Urg,” replied Penelope.

  “Mr. Jambe?” said Mr. Runcorn, who had been working on a rearguard legal challenge to the antineanderthal ruling.

  “Yes? Do we have a case?”

  “I’m afraid not. I can’t seem to find any grounds for one. The nonhuman precedent was overruled on appeal. I’m very sorry, sir. I think I’m playing very badly—might I resign and bring on the legal substitute?”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Jambe kindly. “Have the substitute lawyer continue the search.”

  Runcorn bowed and went to sit on the lawyers’ bench, where a young man in a badly fitting suit had been sitting silently throughout the first third.

  “That Duchess is murder,” muttered Biffo, breathlessly. “She almost had me twice.”

  “Isn’t striking an opponent a red-card three-hoop penalty offense?” I asked.

  “Of course! But if she can take out our best player, then it might be worth it. Keep an eye on her, everyone.”

  “Mr. Jambe?”

  It was the referee, who told us further litigation had been brought against our team. We dutifully approached the Port-a-Court, where the judges were just signing an amendment to the World Croquet League book of law.

  “What is it?”

  “As a result of the Danish Economic (Scapegoat) Act coming into law, people of Danish descent are not permitted to vote or take key jobs.”

  “When did this law come into effect?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  I looked up at Kaine in the VIP box, where he smiled and waved at me.

  “So?” asked Jambe. “Kaine’s dopey ideas have no reflection on croquet—this is sport, not politics.”

  The Whackers’ lawyer, Mr. Wapcaplitt, coughed politely.

  “In that you would be mistaken. The definition of ‘key job’ includes being a highly paid sports personality. We have conducted some background checks and discovered that Ms. Penelope Hrah was born in Copenhagen—she’s Danish.”

  Jambe was silent.

  “I might have been born there, but I’m not Danish,” said Hrah, taking a menacing step towards Wapcaplitt. “My parents were on holiday at the time.”

  “We are well aware of the facts,” intoned Wapcaplitt, “and have already gained judgment on this matter. You were born in Denmark, you are technically Danish, you are in a ‘key job,’ and you are thus disqualified from playing on this team.”

  “Balls!” yelled Aubrey. “If she was born in a kennel, would that make her a dog?”

  “Hmm,” replied the attorney thoughtfully, “it’s an interesting legal question.”

  Penelope couldn’t contain herself any longer and went for him. It took four of us to hold her back, and she had to be forcibly restrained and frog-marched from the green.

  “Down to five players,” muttered Jambe. “Below the minimum player requirement.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wapcaplitt glibly, “it appears the Whackers are the winners—”

  “I think not,” interrupted our substitute lawyer, whose name we learned was Twizzit. “As my most esteemed colleague so rightly pointed out, the rule states thus: ‘Any team that fails to start the game with the minimum of six players forfeits the match.’ The way I see it, the match has already begun, and we can carry on playing with five. Your Honors?”

  The judges put their heads together for a moment and then pronounced, “This court finds for the Swindon Mallets in this matter. They may continue to play into the second third with five players.”

  We walked slowly back to the touchline. Four of the neanderthal players were still sitting on the bench, staring off into space.

  “Where’s Stig?” I asked them.

  I didn’t get an answer. The Klaxon for the second third went off, and I grabbed my mallet and helmet and hurried onto the green.

  “New strategy, everyone,” said Jambe to myself, Smudger, Snake and Biffo—all that remained of the Swindon Mallets—“we play defensively to make sure they don’t score any more hoops. Anything goes—and watch out for the Duchess.”

  The second third was probably the most interesting third ever seen in World League Croquet. To begin with, Biffo and Aubrey whacked both of our own balls into the rhododendrons. This was a novel tactic and had two consequences: firstly, that we weren’t going to score any hoops in the middle third by natural hooping, and second, that we denied the opposition any roquets off our balls. No advantage to win, clearly, but we weren’t trying to win—we were fighting for survival. The Whackers had only to score thirty hoops and hit the center peg to win outright—and the way it was going, we wouldn’t make the last third. Staving off the inevitable, perhaps, but World League Croquet is like that. Frustrating, violent and full of the unexpected.

  “No prisoners!” yelled Biffo, waving his mallet above his head in a display of bravado that would sum up our second-third strategy. It worked. Freed from the constraint of ball defense, we all went into the attack and together caused some considerable problems to the Whackers, who were thrown by the unorthodox playing tactics. At one point I yelled “Offside!” and made up something so outrageously complex that it sounded as if it could be true—it took ten minutes of precious time to prove that it wasn’t.

  By the time the second third ended, we were almost completely exhausted. The Whackers now led by twenty-one hoops to twelve, and we won another eight only because “Bonecrusher” McSneed had been sent off for trying to hit Jambe with his mallet and Biffo had been concussed by the Duchess.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” asked Alf.

  “Fish,” said Biffo, eyes wandering.

  “You okay?” asked Landen when I had returned to the stands to see him.

  “I’m okay,” I puffed. “I’m out of shape, though.”

  Friday gave me a hug.

  “Thursday?” hissed Landen in a hushed voice. “I’ve been thinking. Where did that piano actually come from?”

  “What piano?”

  “The one that fell on Cindy.”

  “Well, I suppose, it . . . just, well . . . fell—didn’t it? What are you saying?”

  “That it was a murder attempt.”

  “Someone tried to assassinate the assassin with a piano?”

  “No. It hit her accidentally. I think it was intended for you!”

  “Who’d want to kill me with a piano?”

  “I don’t know. Have there been any other unorthodox attempts on your life recently?”

  “No.”

  “I think you’re still in danger, sweetheart. Please be careful.”

  I kissed him again and stroked his face with a muddy hand.

  “Sorry!” I muttered, trying to rub it off and making it worse. “But I’ve got too much to think about at the moment.”

  I ran off and joined Jambe for a last-third pep talk.

  “Right,” he said, handing out the Chelsea buns, “we’re going to lose this match, but we’re going to go out in glory. I don’t want it to be said that the Mallets didn’t fight until the last man standing. Right, Biffo?”

  “Trilby.”

  We all knocked our fists together and made the harump noise again, the team reinvigorated—except for me. It was true that no one could say we didn’t try, but for all Jambe’s well-meaning rhetoric, in three weeks’ time the earth would be a smoldering radioactive cinder, and no amount of tarnished glory would save Swindon or anyone else. But I helped myself to a Chelsea bun and a cup of tea anyway.

  “I say,” said Twizzit, who had suddenly appeared in the company of Stig.

  “Have a bun!” said Aubrey. “We’re going out in style!”

  But Twizzit wasn’t smiling. “We’ve been looking at Mr. Stig’s genome—”

  “His what?”

  “His genome. The complete genetic plan of him and the other neanderthals.”

  “And?”

  Twizzit rummaged through some papers. “They were all built between 1939 and 1948 in the Goliath BioEngineering labs. The thing is, the prototype neanderthal could not speak in words that we could understand—so they were built using a human voice box.” Twizzit gave a curious half smile, as though he had produced a spare ace from his sleeve, and announced with great drama, “The neanderthals are 1.03 percent human.”

  “But that doesn’t make them human,” I observed. “How does this help us?”

  “I agree they’re not human,” conceded Twizzit with the ghost of a smile, “but the rules specifically exclude anyone ‘nonhuman.’ Since they have some human in them, they technically can’t fall into this category.”

  There was another long pause. I looked at Stig, who stared back and raised his eyebrows.

  “I think we should lodge an appeal,” muttered Jambe, leaving his Chelsea bun half eaten in his haste. “Stig, have your men limber up!”

  The judges agreed with us. The 1.03 percent was enough to prove they weren’t nonhuman and thus could not be excluded from play. While Wapcaplitt ran off to search the croquet statutes for a reason to appeal, the neanderthals—Grunk, Warg, Dorf, Zim and Stig—limbered up as the Whackers looked on nervously. Neanderthals had often been approached to play, as they could run all day without tiring, but no one until now had ever managed to get any.

  “Okay, listen up,” said Jambe, gathering us around. “We’re back in the game at full strength. Thursday, I want you to stay on the benches to regain your breath. We’re going to fool them with a Puchonski switch. Biffo is going to take the red ball from the forty-yard line over the rhododendron bushes, past the Italian Sunken Garden and into a close position to hoop five. Snake, you’ll take it from there and croquet their yellow—Stig will defend you. Mr. Warg, I want you to mark their number five. He’s dangerous, so you’re going to have to use any tricks you can. Smudger, you’re going to foul the Duchess—when the Vicar gives you the red card, I’m calling in Thursday. Yes?”

  I didn’t reply; for some reason I was having a sudden heavy bout of déjà vu.

  “Thursday?” repeated Aubrey. “Are you okay? You look like you’re in a dreamworld!”

  “I’m fine,” I said slowly. “I’ll wait for your command.”

  “Good.”

  We all did the harump thing, and they went to their places whilst I sat on the bench and looked once again at the scoreboard. We were losing twenty-one hoops to twelve.

  Aubrey nodded at Smudger, who took out the Duchess in grand style: they both careered into the Tea Party and knocked over the table.

  The Klaxon went off, and the game started with renewed aggression. Biffo whacked the yellow ball in the direction of the up-end hoop and hit the Whackers’ ball. Warg took the roquet. With an expert swing, the opponents’ ball tumbled into the Italian Sunken Garden, and ours sailed as straight as a die over the rhododendrons; a distant clack was mirrored by a roar from the crowd, and I knew the ball had been intercepted by Grunk and taken through the hoop. Aubrey nodded at Smudger, who took out the Duchess in grand style: they both careered into the Tea Party and knocked over the table. The Klaxon sounded for a time-out while the Duchess was pulled clear of the tea things. She was conscious but had a broken ankle. Smudger was given the red card but no hoop penalty, as the Duchess had been shown the yellow card earlier for concussing Biffo. I joined the fray as play started up again, but the Whackers’ early confidence was soon evaporating under a withering attack from the neanderthals, who could anticipate their every move simply by reading their body language. Warg passed to Grunk, who gave the ball such an almighty whack that it passed clear through the rhododendrons with a tearing of foliage and was converted by Zim on the other side towards an undefended hoop.

  By the time there were three minutes to play, we had almost caught up: twenty-five hoops to the Whackers’ twenty-nine. Firmly rattled, the Whackers missed a roquet and, with only a minute to run, scored their thirtieth hoop with us only two behind. All they had to do to win was “peg out” by hitting the center post. Whilst they were trying to do this and we tried our best to stop them, Grunk, with eight seconds to go and two hoops to make, whacked a clear double-hooper that went through one up-end hoop, all the forty yards down the green and through the mid. I’d never heard a crowd yell more.

  We had leveled the score and desperately tried to get our ball to the peg in the scrum of players trying to stop the Whackers from doing the same. Warg grunted to Grunk, who ran towards the scrum and tore into them, taking six players down as Warg whacked the ball towards the now unprotected peg. It hit the peg fair and square—but a second after the Klaxon had sounded. Play had ended—in a draw.

  39.

  Sudden Death

  Neanderthals Turn Down Croquet Offer

  A group of neanderthals unwisely turned down an exciting and unrepeatable offer from the Gloucester Meteors yesterday, following their astonishing performance at the 1988 Whackers v. Mallets SuperHoop on Saturday. The generous offer of ten brightly colored glass beads was rejected by a neanderthal spokesman, who declared that conflict, howsoever staged, was inherently insulting. The offer was raised to a set of solid-bottomed cook-ware, and this was also roundly rejected. A spokesman for the Meteors later stated that the neanderthal tactics displayed on Saturday were actually the result of some clever tricks taught them by the Mallets’ team coach.

  Article in The Toad, July 24, 1988

  Good work,” said Alf as we sat on the ground, panting hard. I had lost my helmet in the scrum somewhere but hadn’t until now noticed. My armor was dirty and torn, my mallet handle had split, and there was a cut on my chin. The whole team was muddy, bruised and worn out—but we were still in with a good chance.

  “What order?” asked the umpire, referring to the sudden-death penalty shoot-out. It worked quite simply. We took it in turns to hit the peg, each time moving back ten yards. There were six lines all the way back to the boundary. If we got them all, we started again until someone missed. Alf looked at the players who were still able to hold a mallet and put me seventh, so if we went around again, I was on the easiest ten-yard line.

  “Biffo first, then Aubrey, Stig, Dorf, Warg, Grunk and Thursday.”

  The umpire jotted down our names and moved away. I went to see my family and Landen again.

  “What about the steamroller?” he asked.

  “What about the steamroller?”

  “Didn’t it nearly run you over?”

  “An accident, Land. Gotta go. Bye.”

  The ten-yard line was simple; both players hit the peg with ease. The twenty-yard line was still no problem. The crowd roared as Reading hit the peg first, but our side roared equally when we hit ours. Thirty yards was no problem either—both teams hit the peg, and we all moved back to the forty-yard line. From this distance the peg was tiny, and I didn’t see how anyone could hit it, but they did—first Stern for Reading, then Dorf for us. The crowd roared its support, but then there was a slight rumble of thunder and it began to rain, the full significance of which was yet to dawn.

  “Where are they going?” asked Aubrey as Stig, Grunk, Dorf and Warg ran off to find shelter.

  “It’s a neanderthal thing,” I explained as the rain increased dramatically to a downpour, the water streaming down our armor and onto the turf. “Neanderthals never work, play or even stand in the rain if they can help it. Don’t worry, they’ll be back as soon as it stops.”

  But it didn’t stop.

  “Fifty-yard penalty,” announced the umpire. “O’Fathens for the Whackers and Mr. Warg for the Mallets.”

  I looked at Warg, who was sitting on the bench under the stands, staring at the rain with a mixed expression of respect and wonder.

  “He’s going to lose us the game!” muttered Jambe in my ear. “Can’t you do something?”

  I ran across the soggy green to Warg, who stared at me blankly when I implored him to come and take the penalty.

  “It’s raining,” replied Warg, “and it’s only a game. It doesn’t really matter who wins, does it?”

  “Stig?” I implored.

  “We’d work in the rain for you, Thursday, but we’ve taken our turn already. Rain is precious; it gives life—you should respect it more, too.”

  I returned to the fifty-yard line as slowly as I could to try to give the rain time to finish. It didn’t.

  “Well?” demanded Jambe.

  I shook my head sadly. “I’m afraid not. Winning has never been of any interest to the neanderthals. They played only as a favor to me.”